Islamic Scholar Warns U.S. of 'Two-Faced' Muslims

WASHINGTON – A leader of the small worldwide Muslim reform movement is warning the West against wishful thinking as the U.S. government promotes an intensive dialogue with Islam.

"The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other," Bassam Tibi said Tuesday in an interview with United Press International.

Syrian-born Tibi, who claims to be a direct descendant of the prophet Mohammed and teaches political science at Goettingen University in Germany, appealed for intellectual honesty in these exchanges.

"First, both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms these mean different things to each of them. The word 'peace,' for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam – or 'House of Islam' – to the entire world," explained Tibi, who is also a research scholar at Harvard University.

"This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought, a concept developed by Immanuel Kant," an 18th-century philosopher.

"Similarly, when Muslims and the Western heirs of the Enlightenment speak of tolerance they have different things in mind. In Islamic terminology, this term implies abiding non-Islamic monotheists, such as Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, as second-class believers. They are 'dhimmi,' a protected but politically immature minority."

According to Tibi, the quest of converting the entire world to Islam is an immutable fixture of the Muslim worldview. Only if this task is accomplished, if the world has become a "Dar al-Islam," will it also be a "Dar a-Salam," or a house of peace.

Tibi appealed to his co-religionists to "revise their understanding of peace and tolerance by accepting pluralism." Furthermore, he said, Muslim leaders should give up the notion of Jihad in the sense of conquest, as opposed to Jihad as an internal struggle of the individual.

Tibi's advice comes at a time when the U.S. government is urging American Muslim leaders to promote understanding for the United States in Islamic regions. To Tibi, this is more of a diplomatic endeavor than the promotion of a more profound theological understanding between Islam and the Judeo-Christian worldview prevalent in the West.

But Muzammil Siddiqi, one senior Islamic scholar the State Department consults with, told UPI he found that his efforts in furthering contacts between Muslim, Christian and Jewish theologians were having some success.

Indian-born Siddiqi is the director of the large Islamic Center of Orange County in California. In consultation with the State Department and in cooperation with the University of Kentucky, he traveled back and forth between the United States and the Middle East trying to convince Muslim theologians and jurists to meet with American church leaders.

"I have found that many, though not all, were ready to welcome visitors from America and also to come here to explore with Christians and Jews what we have in common," Siddiqi said.

Though Siddiqi's center is heavily engaged in interfaith activities, he made it clear that to him, as indeed for conservative Christians, syncretism – the mixing of religions – was anathema.

Common values should be sought out, he explained, and the equality of all believers respected, be they Muslims, Christians, Hindus or Buddhists. But the purity of the faith must not be compromised.

In an article in the prestigious Hamburg weekly Die Zeit, Tibi gave anecdotal evidence of how daunting a task this dialogue with Islam can be.

The bishop of Hildesheim in Germany paid an imam a courtesy visit in his mosque. The imam handed the Catholic prelate a Koran, which he joyfully accepted. But when the bishop tried to present the imam with a Bible, the Muslim cleric just stared at him in horror and refused to even touch Christianity's holy book.

"The bishop was irritated because he perceived this behavior as a gross discourtesy," wrote Tibi, "but the imam had only acted according to his faith. For if an imam gives a bishop a Koran, he considers this a Da'Wa, or call to Islam."

This, explained Tibi, must be borne in mind when one engages in a dialogue with Muslim "scholars," for it corresponds to a verse in the Koran: "And say ... to those who are unlearned: 'Do ye submit yourselves?'" (Surah 3:20).

I use a particular terminology to get around this conceptual mess by distinguishing between Muslims and Islamicists. There is a profound difference. I have observed that Muslims are, by and large, regular folks who basically want to live unmolested, be successful entrepreneurs, and take care of their families. They tend to hang out in libraries, and are content to live as peaceable, law abiding citizens under secular, democratic government. Their young men's serious leisure interests tend to focus on girls, soccer, and beer, and their young women's include alluring swimwear, fashion trends, and movies such as Titanic.

Islamicists, on the other hand, want to burn down those same libraries, and are willing to kill themselves and their children to destroy everything and everyone that stands in the way of Islamic world domination. They have no part time interests other than furthering those goals.

For a good understanding of how the distinction can be made practicable, spend some time in Istanbul and Turkish beachfront resorts.

Harvard Loves Jihad
by Daniel Pipes
New York Post
June 11, 2002
http://www.daniepipes.org/article/419/

Imagine it's June 1942 - just a few months after Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States. At Harvard University, a faculty committee has chosen a German-American to give one of three student orations at the festive commencement ceremony. He titles it "American Kampf," purposefully echoing the title of Hitler's book, "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle") in order to show the positive side of "Kampf." When this prompts protests, a Harvard dean defends it as a "thoughtful oration" that defines the concept of Kampf as a personal struggle "to promote justice and understanding in ourselves and in our society." The dean promises, "The audience will find his oration, as did all the Harvard judges, a light of hope and reason in a world often darkened by distrust and conflict."

Then the student turns out to be past president of the Harvard German Society, a group with a pro-Nazi taint - but the administration still isn't bothered. Nor is it perturbed that he praised a Nazi front group for its "incredible work" as well as its "professionalism, compassion and dedication to helping people in dire need," then raised money for it.

Far-fetched? Sure. But exactly this scenario unfolded last week at Harvard. Just replace "German," "Nazi," and "Kampf" with "Islamic," "militant Islamic" and "jihad."

Faculty members chose Zayed Yasin, 22 and the past president of the Harvard Islamic Society, to deliver a commencement address. He earlier had sung the praises of and raised money for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a militant Islamic group closed down by President Bush.

Yasin titled his talk "American Jihad," echoing Osama bin Laden's jihad against the United States. Yasin declared an intention to convince his audience of 32,000 that "Jihad is not something that should make someone feel uncomfortable."

Hmm. The authoritative "Encyclopaedia of Islam" defines jihad as "military action with the object of the expansion of Islam," and finds that it "has principally an offensive character." The scholar Bat Ye'or explains for non-Muslims through history this has meant "war, dispossession . . . slavery and death." That does indeed sound like "something that should make someone feel uncomfortable."

Sadly, this episode is no aberration, but indicative of two important developments.

Apologizing for militant Islam: Hiding jihad's awful legacy is standard operating procedure at Harvard. A professor of Islamic history portrays jihad as "a struggle without arms." The Harvard Islamic Society's faculty adviser defines true jihad as no more fearsome than "to do good in society." All this is part of a pattern of pretending Islam had nothing to do with 9/11.

Neutral in wartime. Harvard appears neutral in the current war, as Harvard Business School student Pat Collins pointed out in a scathing Washington Times op-ed. Take the example of Hamas: While President Bush has called it "one of the deadliest terrorist organizations in the world today," a Harvard spokesman replies "no comment" when asked if it is a terrorist organization and the university has allowed fund-raising on its premises on behalf of Hamas.

Even today, militant Islamic groups have full access to university facilities and the right to advertise their activities. Yet the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), a training program for the U.S. armed forces, is the only student group at Harvard to be denied access to university facilities and disallowed from advertising its activities.

Unfortunately, Harvard's stance is typical of nearly all North America universities. Almost every Middle East specialist hides the truth about jihad and (as shown by a chilling report from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, Defending Civilization) almost every campus drips contempt for the U.S. war effort (typical statement: "The best way to begin a war on terrorism might be to look in the mirror").

"You are with us, or you are against us": Harvard and other universities need to look hard into their soul and decide on which side they stand.

Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org), director of the Middle East Forum, received his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard and taught history there.

What has happened in American Universities is that, far from allowing sober reflection and discussion of all sides to all issues in an ivory tower far from the raucous crowd of public outcry, free from the passions related to any given issue, the University has become rather an agent of social change, essentially fusing itself with the most extreme elements of any given radical position.

The University has become a hermetically sealed universe where only views congruent with the liberal-socialist axis hold sway, and conservative thinkers, students, and teachers are ostracized, and all in the name of "diversity."

Far from opening the minds of students to other ideas, the function of the University has changed to the chief advocate of ideas contrary to American ideology as laid down in the Declaration of Independence.

Learning doesn't occur so much as indoctrination. The University has fundamentally changed over the last forty years or so.

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