The Church’s Latin liturgy and humanist devotion to classical antiquity hardened this self-portrait, leaving little room for Islamic or Jewish voices. By aligning itself with antiquity rather than the multilingual, multifaith worlds of al-Andalus and the Levant, Europe chose a story of continuity over complexity.

Yet this narrative concealed a deep contradiction — how could a civilization claim universality while denying the traditions that sustained it? This tension, between selective inheritance and suppressed hybridity, set the stage for German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s radical critique of what he called life-denying civilization.

Christianity’s famine of life

For Nietzsche, the moral revolution of Christianity marked the moment when Europe began to starve its instincts. In (1888), he accused the Church of destroying “the whole harvest of ancient civilization.” What began as a transformation of Jewish ethics into Roman law soon became, in Nietzsche’s eyes, a moral economy built on guilt and repression. Power became sin; pleasure became shame; suffering became virtue.��

In his , Nietzsche diagnosed this as the psychology of ressentiment — a world where the weak define “good” by condemning the strong. “Man would rather will nothingness than not will at all,” he wrote, describing how the will to life was replaced by a will to denial. Ascetic ideals turned vitality inward, away from creation and toward salvation.��

While Moorish Spain celebrated philosophy, architecture and sensual beauty, Christian Europe retreated into metaphysics. Nietzsche’s critique, though aimed at his own century, looked backward in search of worlds that had once embraced existence. This hunger for vitality, this famine of the spirit, would drive him southward, to the civilization he saw as the embodiment of life-affirmation.

Moorish Spain and the lost East

To show what Europe lost, Nietzsche invoked the memory of Moorish Spain, calling it “a wonderful culture … nearer to us and appealing more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece.” For him, al-Andalus was the model of a life-affirming civilization — one that “said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life.” 

Its achievements were not metaphors but monuments. By the 10th century, Córdoba housed over 400,000 manuscripts, far surpassing any European city. Scholars like Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) preserved and expanded Aristotle, pioneering rationalism centuries before René Descartes. 

As historian notes, translators in Toledo transmitted Arabic philosophy, optics and medicine into Latin, laying the intellectual foundations of the European university. This pluralism extended beyond knowledge. The architecture of the Alhambra, by María Rosa Menocal, fused geometry, calligraphy and poetry into a sensual celebration of beauty.��

To Nietzsche, such refinement born of strength exemplified what he called “noble and manly instincts” — not patriarchal domination but the courage to live without guilt, to turn instinct into art. In contrasting this Moorish feast with Europe’s Christian famine, Nietzsche was not idealizing Islam; he was diagnosing Europe’s amnesia. Al-Andalus, he believed, was a mirror of what Europe could have been: confident, worldly and joyous in its creation.

Orientalism and Nietzsche’s mirror

Nietzsche’s admiration, however, came filtered through Orientalist romanticism. Scholar Ian Almond it as “rhetorical Islamophilia” — a fascination less with Islam itself than with what it symbolized: vitality, sensuality and affirmation. Nietzsche’s Islam was drawn not from theology or travel but from the same 19th-century sources that nourished German writer and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s West–Eastern Divan and French philosopher Ernest Renan’s racialized Orientalism.

Like many Romantics, Nietzsche saw “the East” as everything Europe was not: instinctive where Europe was cerebral, passionate where it was ascetic. The difference was that Nietzsche inverted moral polarity. For him, the “sensuous East” was not decadent but noble — the antithesis of Christian weakness. In that inversion, he both challenged and reproduced Orientalism: the East remained Europe’s reflection, not its equal.

Yet this mirror cracked the old binary. When Nietzsche could say the Moorish world was “nearer to us,” he implicitly questioned the idea of a pure, bounded Europe. His rhetoric of life-affirmation became, unintentionally, a bridge toward what post-colonial thinkers would later call entanglement. Nietzsche’s mirror may have been distorted, but it reflected a Europe uneasy with its own reflection — a civilization that could admire the vitality of the Other only after destroying it.

The irony Nietzsche intuited has since unfolded with eerie precision. The very civilization he saw as “life-affirming” came to be branded as “fanatical”, while the Europe he described as spiritually impoverished reinvented itself as the bastion of liberal reason. 

In the 19th century, Romantic writers such as and turned the Muslim world from a landscape of sensual freedom into one of moral excess and irrationality. After the colonial encounters of the 20th century and the geopolitics of the 21st, this image hardened into the stereotype of “Islamic fanaticism.”��

Meanwhile, Europe’s Christian famine — its moral rigidity and guilt — was secularized into a liberal order that prized tolerance yet struggled to embrace the vitality it once condemned. AsTalal Asad argues in , secularism did not erase the Christian inheritance; it refined its moral discipline under new banners. The result is an inversion Nietzsche would have recognized: the “lively, free” Muslim world recast as repressed, and a “life-denying” Christendom reborn as the world’s moral guide.

From inheritance to entanglement

Post-Orientalist scholars have since redrawn the map Nietzsche glimpsed only dimly. Said showed that “the Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture.” Historians like and philosophers such as trace how Nietzsche’s writings later circulated through Arab intellectual networks, influencing debates about modernity and secularism.

These exchanges reveal that knowledge never moved in one direction; it was reciprocal, sustained by translation and critique. The city of Toledo — where Muslims, Jews and Christians once translated each other’s books — embodies this truth. 

Civilization advanced not through isolation but through contact zones: Baghdad’s Bayt al-Hikma, Sicily under Frederick II and Córdoba’s academies. Each was a site where languages met, and worldviews merged. The myth of a self-contained Europe collapses when viewed from these crossroads. Nietzsche’s “life-affirming” Moorish Spain thus prefigures the post-Orientalist insight that vitality arises from mixture. His “life-denying” Europe warns what happens when cultures mistake purity for power. 

Today, as Europe grapples with pluralism, migration and memory, the philosopher’s metaphor acquires new urgency: civilizations survive only by affirming the fullness of their entanglements. When they forget, the feast turns once again to famine.

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On , 2025, two government officials, Safi Ullah and Shah Khalid, and two teachers, Rafi Ullah and Nisar Ali Shah, were abducted in Bannu, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. These kidnappings, which TTP Commander Qari Niaz carried out, are indicative of the agenda the group has.

The reign of terror by the TTP is not a sequence of isolated cases; it is a bigger, systematic operation to take advantage of the local communities and destabilize them. The TTP, which is driven by a of Islam, wants to legitimize their acts as jihad.

In actuality, their reasons lie in personal interest, political influence and an ideology that aims at bringing a reign of terror, using religion as a tool to serve their interests. Their activities, such as kidnapping innocent citizens in exchange for ransom, stealing vital funds, thus instilling fear in the local people, are contrary to the same principles that they purport to preach.

Misinterpretation of Islam

In the cases, the TTP did not just kidnap teachers, whose services are needed for the future of the country, but also stole their rupees. The kidnapping of government officials and stealing their funds highlights how the TTP is determined to ruin the development of Pakistan and sabotage the social structure of the country.

These activities are an outright contravention of the Islamic doctrine, which the sanctity of life and justice, as well as protecting the weak. On the contrary, the TTP has misused these values to complete its agenda.

This brutality is not new. The history of the TTP as a violent organization dates back to their attacks on , , and , which is highly essential to the stability of the country and its citizens. Their terror campaign has grown over the years, perpetuating the cycle of violence, which has a direct negative impact on civilians through destabilizing communities.

The attacks by TTP on teachers, government officials and ordinary citizens show their disrespect towards the sanctity of life. They are motivated by pure greed, the desire for power and the fear of being dominated.

Pakistan’s attempt to fight back��

Nevertheless, these barriers have not derailed the determination of Pakistan to fight terrorism. In Darah Hassanzai, , the local people waged war against TTP operatives who attempted to collect Ushr, an outlawed tax. The community, together with the police reinforcement, caught the TTP operatives, sending a clear message to the global communities: terrorism and exploitation will not be tolerated by the people of Pakistan. This act of solidarity and bravery is a sign of the strong spirit of the Pakistani citizens, who are bent on resisting the people who want to ruin their lifestyle.

The fight against the TTP is not only about military power, but about moral determination. The elders of Hathi Khel and Taos Khel in Domel, Bannu, issued an to the TTP. They must leave the area by October 10, 2025, or they will face a joint police operation. This community-based program is a strong appeal that the Pakistani people will not submit to terror and will keep struggling to achieve peace and stability.

The violence and exploitation committed by aim to undermine the development in Pakistan. Through civic targeting, extortion and destruction of critical infrastructure, the TTP has harmed local economies, disrupted development and deterred foreign investment. In their quest to illicit wealth and power, they cause instability in the security environment in the country, hence forming an atmosphere of fear that is detrimental to the efforts made by Pakistan to move forward.

Pakistan’s optimistic outlook

Nevertheless, these challenges notwithstanding, remains determined to protect its citizens, infrastructure and national stability. The is persistent in ensuring that its citizens are no longer exposed to the reign of terror by the TTP. Law enforcement efforts, military operations and community-based initiatives are being utilized to counter the influence of the TTP, building a fear and violence-free future.

Despite the TTP’s persistent Terrorism, the power and unity of Pakistan will win. The quick response from the government to these attacks is a sign that the TTP’s terrorism will not succeed in derailing Pakistan’s developmental progress.

The future of Pakistan is still very bright and hardy as the communities, law enforcers and leaders of the nation work in conjunction to fight against these terror-causing agents. The ideological perversion of violence and exploitation by the TTP will be destroyed sooner or later, and Pakistan will emerge stronger than ever despite the adversities.

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Organizations like Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan () in the tribal belt of Pakistan serve as an easy example of such a group of people who violate the religious principles they claim to support. The TTP is one of the longest-lasting instances of terrorism in Pakistan that misinterprets Islam to serve a political purpose.

The TTP — a group that emerged from the tribal belt following the US takeover of Afghanistan — aimed to impose its own twisted interpretation of Sharia, which not only targeted state institutions but also innocent citizens, schools, polio workers and religious minorities — actions that directly conflict with Islamic teachings. 

The TTP does not have political grievances or seek regional independence like many other militant groups; instead, it explicitly uses violence as a religious obligation. This makes its misuse of Islamic principles particularly significant and relevant to consider within the context of faith-based radicalization. The TTP’s extremist rhetoric employs religious language to justify violence, and it remains crucial to return to the true meaning of Islam to counter these distorted terrorist ideologies.

Religion was never the reason

The reason behind such extremist groups is rooted in political and psychological systems and stems greatly from being uninformed and depressed. Research into poverty, conflict and development in Pakistan has shown that poverty can lead to of beliefs. Such research demonstrates that financial and social problems, rather than religious beliefs, create a prime environment for joining an extremist group.��

When young people are deprived of hope, education and opportunities, they become impressionable and vulnerable. This creates space for terrorists to exploit. Instead of being guided by genuine religious teachings, these youths are fed anger and resentment, dressed up as devotion to God. Through such manipulation, acts of violence are sanctified in their eyes, legitimizing revenge and sacrifice as something sacred.

An Iranian on the resurgence of the TTP shows that this group, which continues to inspire radical extremists today, did so by abandoning all principles of kindness, fairness and moderation established in Islam. They became notorious for their rigidity, rejecting any differences and excluding Muslims from their community for the slightest reasons. The current TTP has persisted in these wrongdoings and only intensified them. Their cruelty is driven by fanaticism, which disregards the mercy at the core of Islam.

Authentic Islamic teachings never condone such actions

Religion, according to the Holy Qur’an (the central religious text of Islam) and the teachings of the founder of Islam, Prophet Muhammad, has nothing to do with violence; it is never linked to fire and bullets. In fact, in Islam, spreading fitnah — discord and strife — is considered among the gravest of evils.

In the Qur’an’s Surah Al-Ma’idah, , it is said clearly: “Whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land, it is as if he had slain mankind entirely.” If a life is taken, it is as if a whole universe is lost. Islam holds the sanctity of life in the highest regard. But these extremist groups change the meaning of holy words, isolate parts of scripture and mislead people to support their bloodthirsty actions.

While pretending to believe, terrorists work to control the community by threatening them. 

Terrorism only reveals the low moral values of those who commit it. They claim to seek justice, yet in reality, they just cause more destruction and ruin. In Islam, justice is not pursued through violence and guns; instead, its advocates seek justice by using respectful procedures, kindness and honesty. 

Several Islamic sources (like the Sirah and Hadith collections) recount that when the Prophet Muhammad faced deep persecution in Mecca, through mockery, boycott and attempts on his life, he showed restraint and entrusted justice to God. After the Muslim victory in 630 CE, known as the , he marked his triumph not with revenge but with a general amnesty, forgiving long-standing enemies. He spoke the famous words, “Go, for you are free.”

If violence is justified in the name of religion, it becomes even more dangerous because the perpetrators believe their actions carry divine approval. 

The Qur’an, however, repeatedly stresses that peace should be the foremost goal for Muslims. If there is conflict between groups of believers, Surah Al-Hujurat, , advises them to find a solution. “If two groups among the believers should fight, then make a settlement between them. But if one of them oppresses the other, then fight against the one that oppresses until it returns to the command of Allah.” This verse does not promote rebellion or terrorism. It commands one to pursue peace and justice in accordance with moral and rightful conduct.

Terrorism rejects human dignity

No matter the claims made, is an inhumane act that betrays the religion it purports to uphold.��

Supposed martyrdom achieved through killing, taking pleasure in spilling blood or committing suicide attacks are not acts of true faith; they demonstrate a lack of courage. Revenge against innocent individuals holds no honor, and hatred brings only further suffering. True strength lies in self-control, in the capacity to forgive those who deserve retribution and in helping others rather than spreading terror.

The actions of groups like the TTP contradict Islamic principles rather than represent them. Every bomb detonated and bullet fired distances people from the message of peace that Islam carries.

Jihad, in its true Islamic context, symbolizes “struggle” in the path of Allah, embodying the efforts to lead a virtuous life and to do better, making jihad a holy act. But instead of using the actual spiritual context, TTP has radicalized jihad by sowing chaos, confusion and suffering.

Efforts should extend beyond security measures to reclaim the true perception of Islam. Communities, and especially the young, must be guided toward the religion’s authentic teachings, which emphasize life over death and faith over fear. They should learn that prayer, compassion, and peace are stronger than violence, even in the face of oppression.

Organizations like TTP are fueled by secrecy, lack of knowledge, fear and division. The antidote is light. Light in our minds, light in how we treat others, and the knowledge that Islam is indeed a religion of peace. Choosing mercy over revenge requires real strength; resisting hatred is far more powerful than fire. Fire doesn’t match the strength of faith.

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The rise of Europe

Atul and Glenn note that for five centuries, Europe was the unrivaled center of global progress — the proverbial “cock of the walk.” The Renaissance and Reformation created a civilization of reason, doubt and individualism, launching an age of discovery and dynamism. From Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator sending voyages to explore sea routes, to Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’s conception of a new heliocentric universe, Dutch anatomist Andreas Vesalius’s dissections leading to the discovery of a new body, Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci’s personification of a new Renaissance man and German theologian Martin Luther’s new Christianity, Europe redefined humanity and remade the world.

Like India, China and Egypt earlier, Europe achieved greatness that included both spectacular achievements and much suffering. Europe gave birth to individualism, inquiry and innovation, leading to the Industrial Revolution and a modern scientific worldview.

European decline

The great changes in Europe also unleashed nationalism and conflict. Martin Luther’s 95 theses in 1517 led to the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) that caused the death of 25–40% of the population of the areas that now comprise modern-day Germany. The French Revolution led to the Napoleonic Wars. In the 20th century, Europe self-destructed thanks to the “tragedy of World War I” and the “suicide of World War II”.

By 1945, the US produced half of global output and emerged as the global top dog. NATO’s design — to keep “the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down” — locked Europe in general, and Germany in particular, into subservience and dependency. Decolonization and the Soviet shadow eroded Europe’s confidence, even as prosperity rose under the new European welfare states. Living standards for the people rose higher than ever before, even as Europe shrank on the global stage. This is a tragedy of success: The same civilization that had given the world humanism and science became exhausted by its own wars and moral contradictions.

Restoration through union

Europe began rebuilding through integration. The European Coal and Steel Community of 1951 evolved into the European Economic Community, the customs union and later the Maastricht Treaty, uniting former enemies in a shared economic and later political project. French visionaries Jean Monnet and Jacques Delors imagined a new European entity that would achieve prosperity through cooperation. The single market, the euro and post-1991 enlargement were part of this grand European project. Without integration, you would not have the prosperity you see in Europe today. The European experiment, though bureaucratic and incomplete, revived Europe’s material strength and moral confidence.

Despite the great benefits of the EU, there are downsides too. The EU remains constrained by the requirement for unanimity, overregulation and a “democratic deficit” that saps vitality. Italian economist Mario Draghi’s 2024 report on competitiveness diagnoses Europe’s deep malaise: European economies have struggled to innovate, create jobs and compete with both the US and China. Europe’s structure is too bureaucratic to act decisively on economics, industry, defense or migration.

In a nutshell, economic and political competence has not been matched by strategic capacity, leaving the continent vulnerable to shocks from Russia, China and an increasingly unreliable US. The very success of the welfare state has bred complacency, creating a paradox where prosperity dulls ambition and consensus replaces vision. Today, Europe suffers from the curse of affluence.

Can Germany and France make Europe great again?

Two competing models define Europe’s future. France’s vision seeks “strategic autonomy,” a federal Europe with its own military and industrial backbone. Meanwhile, Germany’s approach favors a confederation of sovereign states and continued reliance on Washington. Both nations, however, face internal strains: In Germany, over 20% of residents are foreign-born, and this has led to the growing popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany, which is now polling higher than the ruling coalition.

Germany’s now diverse society lacks the cohesion of yore. For example, the Turkish immigrant population often sympathizes with those in Gaza over those in Ukraine. No less than two-thirds of this population also votes for the Islamist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. France has similar problems when it comes to immigrants and worse issues when it comes to politics. The Fifth Republic is struggling to pass a budget even as prime ministers come and go. Germany and France now struggle to maintain internal cohesion, a weakness mirrored across Europe.

With a strong memory of Nazi rule, Germans are nervous about the zeitgeist in the US. President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have addressed generals, raising alarm not only in the US but also in Germany. Fears of a deal between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have spooked Berlin, reminding Germans of their vulnerability. Such a deal would leave the Germans high and dry, both politically and economically. Note that the Germans gave up on cheap Russian gas because of American pressure. As the transatlantic bond frays, Europe will either learn to stand alone or risk marginalization in a world defined by American retrenchment and Chinese power.

Europe divided, can it stay united?

Demography and debt compound all the above tensions in Europe. An aging, indebted continent faces a sovereign debt crisis. Immigration is inflaming passions across the continent as well. On the one hand, the far-right is on the rise. On the other hand, many minorities are turning to radical or political Islam. This loss of internal cohesion is dangerous not only for democracy but for the future of European societies.

When large numbers of migrants come to any society, it is difficult to absorb them without friction. That has been the lesson of history. In the case of Europe, highly religious immigrants struggle for assimilation in a secular Westphalian society. They do not come from cultures with the same historic separation between church and state. This weakens nationalism that has defined Europe since 1648. It is clear that immigration is Europe’s moral and political crucible — the test of whether Enlightenment values can survive contact with 21st-century realities.

There is also the issue of inequality. To be fair, this issue is not as significant in Europe as in the US. Yet it is also straining a sense of cohesion in a continent that evolved to have a fair degree of social equality after World War II.

Yet one can be cautiously optimistic in the long run. History tells us that only crisis brings renewal. From the Reformation to the world wars, upheaval has forced transformation in Europe. Today’s dangers — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a possible US retreat and China’s rise — may again provoke change. French economist Thomas Piketty posits that great crises like world wars, depressions and revolutions can produce renewal. A new European order might emerge through shared defense, decisive governance and economic reforms, or it could collapse into paralysis. If Europe fails to act, it risks becoming a museum of its past rather than a maker of the future.

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Fatima is just one of of Shia Muslims across the globe who travel to Iraq to participate in the world’s largest annual peaceful gathering, known as Arbaeen, every year. For Shia Muslims, who make up the majority in Iran and Iraq, Arbaeen, which translates to “40” in Arabic, is a significant occasion and one of the largest religious gatherings in the world. The event marks the 40th day of mourning of Prophet Mohammad’s grandson, Imam Hussain, who was killed by the Umayyad ruler Yazid bin Mu’awiya. He assumed the charge following the death of his father, Muawiya.��

Despite the sweltering temperature, pilgrims from different schools of thought participated in the annual event. This year, temperatures topped , with pilgrims being cooled down with sprayed water during their walk to Karbala before visiting the holy shrines.

Between the shrines of the Prophet’s grandson, Hussain, and his son-in-law, Imam Ali, pilgrims of different ages and nationalities travel 80 kilometers from the city of Najaf to Karbala. They frequently return from the walk feeling famished and exhausted, but their love for all people has spiritually rejuvenated them. It is thought that one’s sins are being forgiven with each step. 

To protect the safety of those participating, Iraqi officials hundreds of miles of road, and local and international charities set up stations called “mawkibs” along the route, providing free food, drink, sweet tea and shelter for those who need it.

From a security point of view, the Arbaeen gathering has always been a challenging for the security grid in Iraq. In the past, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) carried out multiple suicide attacks, hundreds of Shia pilgrims who had been on their way toward Karbala. This year, the Iraqi Government a plot by ISIS terrorists to carry out an attack on the Arbaeen gathering.��

The governor of Karbala, Nasif Jassim al-Khattabi, that his governorate’s Al-Suqur (Falcons) intelligence organization conducted an intelligence operation with a high degree of accuracy and secrecy.����

Twenty-two ISIS terrorists were apprehended who intended to commit crimes, such as setting roadside bombs along the Arbaeen pilgrims’ path, attacking security personnel and religious procession participants, and trying to contaminate the pilgrims’ gathering spots, particularly in the southern regions of the governorate.

Why do Shia Muslims support Palestine?��

The Shia world’s center is Karbala, where Hussain and his brother Abbas are buried in two massive mausoleums facing one another. In honor of Hussain, who died in 680 in a fight with the Umayyad caliph Yazid in Karbala, pilgrims openly express their anguish by crying and lamenting. In light of the conflict in Gaza, pilgrims have prominently displayed Palestinian flags throughout the event.

On October 7, 2023, a Hamas-led onslaught on southern Israel claimed an estimated 1,139 lives. The Israeli counterattack on Gaza has proven to be devastating. According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, Israel has murdered over Palestinians in Gaza. People across the Muslim world are in a state of shock over the bitterness of the conflict and have expressed their sympathy for the Palestinians through a variety of political rallies and religious gatherings. Approximately 21 million pilgrims attended the Arbaeen celebrations this year, which are always held under strict security.

This year, the official slogan of the Arbaeen gathering was “Inna Ala Al-Ahd-Ahd,” an Arabic phrase which means “we are in the covenant”, to show loyalty to the ideals and principles of Imam Hussain. Keeping this year’s theme in mind, Syed Ajaz, 35, from India’s Uttar Pradesh, traveled to Iraq just to fulfill his religious responsibility in the annual Arbaeen gathering. 

While speaking with the freelance journalist Sameer Hussain, Syed Ajaz says that as a Shia Muslim, it is incumbent upon them to support the oppressed class of society. “The state of Israel has imposed a war of starvation on Gaza. I’m taking part in the Arbaeen gathering just to express my solidarity with the people of Palestine,” Syed told the author. 

There is no official order in India to control pro-Palestine protests, yet pro-Palestine voices have been criminally charged since the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel.

India has criminalized pro-Palestine voices by booking people for holding pro-Palestine demonstrations. To avoid being arrested, Syed Ajaz thought that Iraq was a suitable place to protest against Israeli war crimes. 

“The Modi government has booked dozens of people involved in pro-Palestine protests. I saved my annual earnings just for the Arbaeen walk, and registered my protest peacefully over there,” Syed added.

What connects Gaza and Iraq’s Karbala? Fundamentally, it is a common tale of resisting persecution and not allowing tyranny to crush hope. Let’s examine it more closely. Hussain chose truth and stood alone against an unjust tyrant in 680 CE.

With an unwavering resolve, people in Gaza today fight occupation and voicelessness in the face of overwhelming power. Pilgrims who spoke with the author described Arbaeen as a collective call for justice and dignity, a protest in motion, and termed this walk a campaign — a nonviolent demonstration that utilizes social media to spread the word about ending the suffering in Gaza.

Speaking with the author, Islamic Scholar Sheeraz Hussain said that “It is the greatest manifestation of unity and solidarity that has no parallel anywhere else in the world.” He says Arbaeen carries a message. The purpose of Arbaeen is that the sacrifice of Imam Hussain (A.S.) should not be considered merely a historical event, but should be kept alive, so that the message of “Hayhat minna al-dhilla” (No to humiliation) continues forever in the face of oppression.

“Arbaeen is not just a gathering; it is a unique way of acting upon the sayings and deeds of Imam Hussain (A.S.) that we must always stand against tyranny and oppressors. This is why we raise the flag of Palestine,” Sheeraz told Sameer Hussain.

Hussain’s will to oppose oppressors

When Yazid, the son of Mu’awiya, came to power in 680, Islam’s basic principles and foundations were changed. Yazeed wanted all Muslims to pledge their allegiance to him. Hussain, the son of the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson, was the main target of Yazid. When Hussain was formally given Yazid’s ultimatum, he deftly requested some time at night to consider it.

He was granted this time after a difficult negotiation. He took his family and left for the safety of Mecca that night, while everyone was sound asleep. Fighting in the Holy City was severely prohibited for Muslims. Many Shi’as followed him. Denying Yazeed’s allegiance, Hussain took a firm stand against Yazeed’s tyrannical rule. Hussain announced to all: “Hal Min Nasirin Yan Surna”, an Arabic phrase that means, “Is there anyone who can help my cause?” This announcement cost Hussain 73 lives of his noble companions, including his six-month-old son, Ali Asghar.

Carrying forward the message of Hussain, Shia Muslims believe that Imam Hussain didn’t bow to Yazid. “His message has a lot of relevance today. Arbaeen serves as a global protest against countries that have committed human rights violations,” says a Shia pilgrim, Syeda Hijab Zehra, 20, who came from Pakistan. 

She adds that Karbala is a symbol of oppression and today, Palestine too is suffering under tyranny and injustice. “In the time of Imam Hussain (A.S.), the greatest issue facing Islam was the rule of Yazid, and today the greatest issue is the rule of Zionism.” Apart from religious pilgrimage, the Arbaeen gathering serves as a powerful protest for issues affecting the Shiite community around the region.

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These systems do not want peace because their survival depends on sustained conflict. This is why diplomatic summits, ceasefire deals and foreign interventions consistently fail: they target symptoms, not causes. If the problem is structural, then so must be the solution. Peace in the Middle East will not come through negotiation. It will come through a civilizational shift, and it demands three acts of moral courage.

The first is capitalist liberalization. Every individual must gain the right to produce, to trade and to own. No government has the right to command his labor, confiscate his earnings or dictate his future. Capitalism is not a system of greed. It is the only system that recognizes the moral right of a person to live for his own sake.

The second is cultural conservatism. A society cannot survive without roots. When families collapse, when traditions vanish, when morality fades into relativism, chaos follows. A rational culture does not erase its past. It protects what gives life meaning, not by coercion, but by conviction.

The third is institutional transformation. No regime that survives by crushing liberty, spreading violence and fueling sectarian hate can remain in power without destroying the future. People must not reform such systems. They must replace them. Political freedom requires new institutions built on justice, law and individual rights.

This is the foundation of what I call Conservative modernism. It rejects both Islamic totalitarianism and secular technocracy. It affirms that peace cannot exist without liberty, and liberty cannot exist without moral strength. This is not a policy. It is a philosophy.

Sectarian wars and the legacy of doctrinal politics

We cannot understand the Middle East’s political instability apart from the theological and sectarian divides embedded within Islam itself. The — originating from a dispute over the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad — has long outgrown its historical moment to become the structural backbone of regional conflict. This divide was never merely theological; it became during the first Islamic civil wars and later into full-fledged state ideologies during the rise of rival empires like the Sunni Ottoman Caliphate and the Shia Safavid dynasty.��

These empires did not merely represent competing political centers — they embodied competing claims to spiritual authority. In modern terms, regimes seeking to legitimize their power through religious division have hardened, institutionalized and weaponized these doctrinal fault lines rather than letting them fade. 

The legacy of these doctrinal wars lives on in today’s proxy conflicts, from Yemen to Syria, Iraq to Lebanon. Iran, as the self-appointed guardian of the Shia cause, has instrumentalized this divide to its revolutionary ideology through paramilitary proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq and Syria.��

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies, while less overtly ideological, have with their versions of sectarian patronage and security alignments. The result is not simply a clash between states, but a doctrinal cold war that perpetually destabilizes the region through religious identity and existential fear.

Political Islam, once unleashed as the doctrine of the state, does not merely challenge liberty — it annihilates the very concept. Its metaphysical certainty surpasses even the most dogmatic ideologies of the West. It does not see disagreement as an error. It brands it as blasphemy. What follows is inevitable. The state becomes paranoid. It cannot rest. It must constantly search for new traitors to purge. Reform becomes a crime. Dialogue becomes apostasy. There can be no middle ground, no compromise — only absolute control.

In this system, truth belongs to the ruling sect alone. To think differently is not a mistake — it is treason. The state no longer governs; it sanctifies itself. Power fuses with theology. Rule becomes divine command. And from that moment, every act of dissent becomes a threat to the sacred order. No regime built on this logic can tolerate peace. Peace implies coexistence. It suggests that another version of truth might exist. But in sectarian totalitarianism, there is only one truth — and only one authority to speak it. The heretic becomes more dangerous than the foreign enemy, because he corrupts the system from within. That is why these regimes live in constant fear of internal betrayal. They do not govern citizens; they hunt them.

Colonial powers did not build the modern Middle East into nations. They it into fragments. They drew their borders without reason. National identities remained shallow. In this vacuum, sectarian ideology offered a seductive substitute. It gave rulers a way to seize power without earning it. They did not ask for the people’s consent. They claimed divine authority instead.

Theocrats wrapped themselves in clerical robes to escape accountability. In Iran, the doctrine of placed unchecked political power in the hands of a cleric. Ayatollah Khomeini did not rule as a man — he ruled as a voice of God. Sunni radicals followed the same path. Groups like ISIS declared caliphates not to govern, but to sanctify tyranny. These regimes do not fear criticism, because they do not answer to men. They answer to the metaphysical fiction they claim to represent.

Islamic regimes use a dangerous illusion. They raise the banner of anti-Zionism not to unify but to distract. They Judaism and Israel as the ultimate enemy, hoping to forge a sense of solidarity across sectarian lines. But the truth remains: no propaganda can erase centuries of hatred between Sunni and Shia, between Salafi and Sufi, between Arab and Persian, between Turkic and non-Turkic. The hatred runs deep, and it does not disappear when leaders shout slogans against Israel.

This is not unity. It is manipulation. Anti-Zionism becomes a tool to dissent at home. It channels public anger away from corruption, poverty and tyranny, and toward an invented external enemy. It does not heal division; it hides it. The regimes that use this tactic know they cannot survive on truth, so they survive on scapegoats. But lies do not last. The cracks widen. The rhetoric grows louder, while the people grow poorer.

This is the real engine of Middle Eastern conflict. Not just land. Not just oil. It is the battle for the right to define God’s will — and to use that claim as a weapon. No treaty will break this system. No ceasefire will fix it. If regimes like Iran continue to export sectarian revolution as a matter of policy, the region will remain trapped in endless war. Peace will never begin on a battlefield. It begins in the mind. We must name doctrinal tyranny, expose it and defeat it. Only then can the Middle East escape from the chains of sacred war and step into the realm of civil peace.

The 1979 Iranian Revolution

The 1979 was not simply a change of regime; it was a civilizational rupture that produced a theocratic state with an unprecedented mission: to restructure the Islamic world according to the vision of Shiite clerical rule. Iran’s revolution claimed divine authorization through the doctrine of Vilayat al-Faqih. This doctrine, enshrined in Iran’s constitution, granted religious elites not only domestic supremacy but also a global mandate.��

Article 154 explicitly that the Islamic Republic was duty-bound to “support the just struggles of the oppressed” worldwide. This ideological euphemism laid the legal foundation for regional insurgencies, proxy warfare and transnational terror networks. This new paradigm made Iran’s foreign policy an extension of messianic doctrine.

The Islamic Republic institutionalized this transformation of ideology into action by creating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (), and specifically its external wing, the , which carried out the mission of exporting the revolution. These were not simply elite military units but ideological vanguards — armed missionaries designed to reshape the region in Tehran’s image.

The IRGC and funded Shia militant factions during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, inside Iraq, creating the blueprint for what would later evolve into militia-state fusion. As early as 1982, Iran establish Hezbollah in Lebanon, embedding its revolutionary DNA in a new Shia militia that would grow into the region’s most sophisticated paramilitary movement.��

But Iran did not confine its ambitions to its sect. Tehran built connections with Sunni groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Iran and its allies bypassed doctrinal differences when they faced a shared strategic enemy in Israel and the West, proving that ideology would bend to power.

Of all Iran’s ideological exports, Hezbollah remains the most enduring and institutionally complete. Born in the rubble of Lebanon’s civil war, �������DZ�������’s 1985 founding manifesto allegiance to Iran’s Supreme Leader and its goal of establishing an Islamic state in Lebanon. As Massaab Al-Aloosy has, Hezbollah evolved into a uniquely hybrid entity — a terrorist organization, political party and social welfare provider. This model of Islamic fascism does not simply mimic the authoritarian features of 20th-century totalitarian regimes. Instead, it integrates them with theological absolutism.��

In �������DZ�������’s worldview, the enemy is not merely political dissent or a foreign occupier. It is ideological impurity. Its of martyrdom, strict sectarian loyalty and rejection of pluralism form the core of an authoritarian theocratic identity, where the sect and the imamate define the sacred political community.

Iran’s reach and pragmatism allowed it to overcome sectarian lines when necessary. Nowhere is this clearer than in its alliance with Hamas, a Sunni group originally rooted in ideology. Initially antagonistic due to theological differences, Hamas gradually embraced Iran’s vision of resistance as its conflict with Israel intensified. Iran financial aid, smuggled weapons, supplied tactical training and built tunnel infrastructure that allowed Hamas to survive and militarize Gaza.��

By the mid-2000s, especially after the group’s electoral victory and its, Hamas began to mirror Iran’s revolutionary language, re-framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a divine struggle, not a solvable territorial dispute. Its leaders visited Tehran, received IRGC guidance and adopted a media strategy aligned with the broader.

This model of revolutionary partnership extended to Yemen, where Iran found a new ideological canvas in the , also known as Ansar Allah. Originally a local revivalist faction rooted in, Iran helped morph the Houthis into a more radicalized, Twelver-aligned militia. The group’s , “Death to America, Death to Israel,” is lifted directly from Iran’s revolutionary chant. By the 2010s, Iran supplied or engineered sophisticated missile and drone capabilities for the Houthis. These weapons the group to strike deep into Saudi Arabia and threaten global commerce in the Red Sea.

The of Saddam Hussein in 2003 provided Iran with its greatest strategic opening since 1979. Iraq, long a bulwark against Iranian expansion, became a vacuum of fractured authority in which Iran could embed deeply rooted proxies. The US-led dismantling of the Iraqi state allowed Tehran to co-opt existing militias such as the and new ones like Kata’ib Hezbollah and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq.��

All these militias pledged spiritual allegiance to Iran’s Supreme Leader. These groups infiltrated Iraqi security institutions, won parliamentary seats and turned Iraq into what I call a militia democracy. What distinguishes them from conventional insurgents is their ideological DNA. Rather than acknowledging themselves as part of a civil war, they present their struggle as resistance to Sunnis and Western imperialism.

Syria’s civil war further deepened Iran’s ideological project. Though the ruling Alawite regime under Bashar al-Assad does not follow mainstream Shiism, its geopolitical vulnerability made it an ideal ally. As protests spiraled into war, Iran intervened with billions in military aid, deploying not just IRGC troops and Hezbollah fighters, but also recruiting tens of thousands of Afghan Shia fighters from the impoverished Hazara population into the.��

These fighters, lured by salaries and promises of martyrdom, became part of Iran’s transnational jihad. Syria thus became the geopolitical artery of Iran’s vision: a corridor of power from Tehran through Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut to the Mediterranean. Iran entrenched what many call the by establishing an ideological, financial and logistical presence in Syria.

Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria are no longer just battlefields. They are proving grounds for a new form of tyranny. These lands have become ideological laboratories, where fanatics test how far they can bend reality to fit a totalitarian creed.

Islamic socialism

The ideological machinery of post-1979 Iran introduced a new hybrid: . While the term may appear contradictory at first glance, it captures the unique fusion of theological absolutism with populist redistributionism. Islamic socialism is an economic-political framework that retains the authoritarian hierarchy of religious fascism, complete with doctrinal obedience and paramilitary enforcement.��

At the same time, it borrows heavily from socialist structures such as centralized welfare, state control over key industries and class-based grievance politics. Just as European fascists in the 20th century adopted socialism to win popular support while retaining autocratic control (e.g., the Nazi “Strength Through Joy” ), the Islamic Republic has developed a theology of resistance economy. Here, economic hardship is not only tolerated but sanctified as martyrdom against global injustice. In this model, people must endure poverty collectively, heroically and violently rather than overcome it through liberal development.��

Shiite theology provides the foundation for this socialist-fascist hybrid, on concepts of suffering, resistance and collective martyrdom. Shiism glorifies the mustadʿafīn, a group that Islamic texts frame as the downtrodden destined for divine justice. Khomeini’s revolutionary rhetoric this religious concept into a political-economic category, portraying the global poor — and particularly the Shia masses — as victims of Western imperialism.��

Economic disparity is not a result of governance failures or global markets, but of cosmic injustice. Similar to how Nazi ideology peasant sacrifice and national suffering as the price of destiny, the Islamic Republic elevates economic deprivation into a moral calling. It framed subsidy cuts, sanctions and austerity as acts of loyalty to a divine cause.

Crucially, leaders do not just impose the model of Islamic Socialism from above; they enforce it through tribal structures and sectarian identities. It replaces civic institutions with kinship loyalty and doctrinal submission. In the Iranian-led axis, traditional tribal instincts are not suppressed but weaponized. Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Shia militias in Iraq all demonstrate this structure. 

War footing as the foundation of economic life

These groups offer not only salaries and protection, but welfare, housing and education — all contingent upon ideological alignment and collective loyalty. They systematically erase individualism. One’s worth is not measured by merit or autonomy but by one’s allegiance to the sect, the tribe and ultimately, the martyrdom cause. This mirrors how Italian fascism and German Nazism pre-modern collectivism to erase individuality and convert citizens into functionaries of myth, soldiers of a destiny beyond themselves.

In these theocratic-socialist regimes, the individual disappears as a political subject. Rather than a bearer of rights, the person becomes a vessel of duty — primarily to the sect, then to the Supreme Leader. Ideological training begins early, often in religious schools controlled by paramilitary arms of the state or proxy groups. These institutions teach loyalty not just to God but to the revolutionary cause. 

The regime trains the youth, like those in Nazi Germany’s, not to think but to serve and sacrifice. �������DZ�������’s and Iran’s indoctrination programs illustrate this well. Here, Islamic Socialism becomes a mechanism for total identity control: dictating what to believe, what to fear, who to love and who to kill. Welfare is no longer a civic right — it is a weaponized privilege, allocated according to sectarian discipline and revolutionary usefulness.��

Moreover, this system depends on a dual moral economy: one inward-facing, promoting solidarity, and one outward-facing, glorifying hostility. Internally, Islamic Socialist leaders teach their communities to see themselves as pure, righteous and chosen. Externally, however, the world is divided into oppressors and enemies — whether they be the West, secular liberals, Sunni rivals or Zionists. 

The state’s leaders direct the economic and military engines toward this perpetual war footing. Iran’s leaders speak not of GDP growth but of jihad of production and economic resistance as if commerce itself were warfare. People allocate resources not to produce prosperity but to sustain ideological conflict. They Nazi Germany’s approach by fusing industry, propaganda and violence into a single war-making machine.

The myth of the Promised Land

Islamist regimes have spent decades weaponizing one of their most enduring myths: the belief that Israel seeks to fulfill a biblical prophecy by expanding its territory. According to this myth, Israel aims to restore the so-called Promised Land, stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates. Islamist leaders and propagandists frequently this claim in Friday sermons, regime media and militant manifestos.��

The narrative serves both psychological and strategic purposes by fostering a sense of perpetual victimhood among Muslim populations and justifying preemptive violence. However, no formal Israeli policy — past or present — has ever such a fantasy. This contradiction between perception and reality is not an accident. It is the product of Islamic fascism.

Arab and Islamic leaders never admit that the biblical Promised Land in the Old Testament covers far less territory than Islamist propaganda claims. While and do reference land covenants, these verses are highly symbolic, varied in interpretation and not presented as a modern political blueprint. The more expansive version — suggesting Israeli claims over half the Arab world — is a misreading or deliberate distortion.��

Even within Jewish religious scholarship, there is no consensus on whether the land covenant is literal, spiritual or eschatological. More importantly, Israel, as a modern state, has never built policy around these verses. The secular Zionist movement that founded Israel drove its actions with political pragmatism, not theological maximalism. The Declaration of Independence, for instance, contains no reference to religious prophecy as a legal or territorial foundation for the state.

Prominent biblical scholars have repeatedly argued that the Promised Land verses do not apply to modern statecraft. Walter Brueggemann, a leading Old Testament theologian, that the land promises in Genesis and Ezekiel symbolize divine fidelity and human obligation. Ezekiel 47:13–23 outlines a limited, region-specific territory tied to historical tribes, not a universal conquest map. Jewish exegetes widely the Nile to Euphrates phrasing in Genesis 15:18 as covenantal poetry, not a literal border plan. Contemporary Jewish religious institutions and Israel’s Chief Rabbinate have never endorsed any policy derived from these verses.

Oslo Accords and the recognition of a two-state framework

Israel’s territorial policy shows a consistent pattern of contraction and compromise, not expansion, contrary to the myth of expansionism. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Israel accepted the1949 rather than pressing beyond. In 1967, during the , Israel captured territory (including Sinai and the West Bank) but returned the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1982 under the.The (1993–1995) and subsequent negotiations all recognized the concept of a two-state solution, even with territorial compromises. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, dismantling settlements without a peace agreement.��

These historical milestones disprove the idea of a consistent theological or messianic territorial agenda. Even in contentious areas like the West Bank, Israeli officials and lawmakers debate expansion according to legal and political frameworks rather than divine mandate.

Regimes like Iran and ideological movements like Hezbollah and Hamas the Abraham Accords as an existential crisis. The accords, signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, were a public rejection of the expansionist myth. They demonstrated that Arab nations — particularly those with strategic awareness — do not believe Israel is seeking to fulfill some ancient prophecy. These are not naïve regimes; they signed normalization agreements based on economic cooperation, technological exchange and geopolitical calculations.

The path forward

Real peace in the Middle East requires structural change. This approach rejects the shallow cycle of summit diplomacy and short-term ceasefires. Structural change demands a civilizational shift: leaders must dismantle sacralized politics and stop using religious narratives to justify power. This isn’t Western-style secularism but a deliberate separation of divine claims from state rule. Only through this shift can the region build lasting peace — rooted not in utopias or despair, but in economic freedom, cultural cohesion and strong institutions.

offers a clear alternative to ideological extremes. It doesn’t fuse them. It escapes them. Unlike secular technocracy, which often alienates traditional societies, conservative modernism respects the cultural depth of the Middle East and promotes practical reform. It builds on Enlightenment ideals like individual liberty and economic autonomy while honoring civilizational continuity.��

Its foundation rests on three pillars: economic liberalism, cultural conservatism and institutional reform. It doesn’t force secularism, nor does it permit theocracy. Instead, it preserves spiritual identity while disarming messianic violence. It respects tradition without falling into tribalism, and religion without surrendering to religious absolutism.

offers a powerful historical model within this framework. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk launched it in the early 20th century as a bold top-down effort to secularize Turkey. He abolished the Ottoman Caliphate, replaced Islamic law with Western legal codes and built a civic nationalism rooted in republican values. Kemalism stands as one of the few successful cases in the Islamic world where state institutions stripped religion of political power without erasing faith itself. Yet, the project also imposed authoritarian control, censorship and bureaucratic rigidity.��

Today, the Middle East can draw lessons from Kemalism — not as a complete solution, but as a foundational blueprint. It shows how nations can curb clerical authority without destroying religious life and how civic nationalism can overcome tribal and sectarian divides by building loyalty to the state.

Kemalism needs a complement. Its authoritarian legacy demands correction through the principles of libertarianism, which counters centralized coercion. Many in the Middle East misinterpret libertarianism as a Western indulgence or a form of moral anarchy. In truth, it is a philosophy of restraint — placing clear limits on state power. 

Within conservative modernism, libertarianism protects individual dignity from being sacrificed for national unity. It upholds free association, freedom of speech, private enterprise and personal conscience as essential pillars of post-sectarian societies. When paired with Kemalist reforms, libertarianism softens the state’s edges and makes room for civil liberties to thrive where ideological control once prevailed.

This fusion directly targets what I call the tribal complex — the web of kinship, patronage and sectarian loyalty that cripples modern statehood across the Middle East. In tribal systems, the individual never stands alone; he serves as a proxy for his group, bound by blood ties and religious allegiance. Tribal logic dictates political loyalty, economic access and legal protection, leaving little room for citizenship or merit. 

This is the real enemy of peace: the absence of a civic concept of the individual. Kemalism dismantles tribal structures through land reform, education and militia disarmament. Libertarianism then builds the culture of self-ownership and economic agency needed to prevent tribalism’s return.  

Conservative modernism demands a profound psychological transformation. Middle Eastern societies must abandon the mythology of martyrdom and embrace the everyday heroism of building families, businesses, schools and institutions. Peace begins when people stop seeking symbolic sacrifice and start pursuing tangible contribution. The new citizen must become a rational actor — focused on dignity through property ownership, child-rearing and value creation. Economic liberalism, in this vision, goes beyond material systems; it launches a moral revolt against fatalism.

Turkey’s potential role in reshaping the Abrahamic framework

Turkey holds the key to securing lasting peace in the Middle East through its integration into the Abrahamic framework. Turkey is a historic power. Unlike the Gulf monarchies that are dependent on petroleum dollars and foreign support, Turkey possesses the internal civilizational strength to lead. Its NATO membership, industrial capacity and nuanced relationship with Islam give it a unique ability to balance religious heritage with strategic logic. Including Turkey in the Abraham Accords would shift the regional balance. It would show that Iran’s ideological barriers are not only penetrable but also collapsing. 

Turkey’s participation would also redefine Muslim solidarity, moving it away from perpetual hostility toward Israel and shared goals in economic growth and technological progress. A regional alliance among Turkey, Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia could create a new peace axis and weaken Iran’s grip on ideological leadership.

The Islamic Republic of Iran remains the greatest single barrier to sustainable peace. This is not merely because of its actions, but because of its doctrine. One cannot reach a lasting agreement with a state that must, by its very ideology, destroy its negotiating partner to remain legitimate. Any peace built upon negotiation with such a regime is a ceasefire with a time limit. We must replace the Islamic Republic not through foreign war, but through internal transformation.

Regime change imposed by foreign powers breeds dependency and resentment, as seen in Iraq. Instead, change must emerge from within Iranian civil society — through education, economic empowerment and ideological detoxification. This requires long-term investment in civic literacy, especially among the youth. Only a population that understands the moral and civic basis of pluralism can dismantle a system built on sectarian fear. Empowered with economic agency and a desacralized worldview, Iranians themselves can — and must — be the agents of transformation.

A stable society must depoliticize religion without erasing it. Secularism is not atheism or cultural erasure — it is a safeguard. By limiting the political misuse of faith, secularism protects mosques, churches and synagogues as spaces for moral reflection, not power. To end partisan abuse, sectarian violence and theocratic repression, states must build a legal firewall between belief and authority. In this separation, both faith and civic life can thrive.

To summarize the core prescriptions proposed throughout this work, the following principles outline a structural roadmap for achieving sustainable peace in the Middle East:

• Depoliticize religion by enforcing constitutional secularism that protects faith while preventing its weaponization.
• Embrace economic liberalism to dismantle tribal patronage and foster individual autonomy.
• Redefine conservatism as civil order, family cohesion and moral continuity — not authoritarianism.
• Promote education reform rooted in critical reasoning, pluralism and civic ethics over sectarian indoctrination.
• Foster internal regime change in Iran and similar regimes through economic empowerment and ideological detoxification.
• Reject foreign invasions, supporting revolutions that emerge organically from educated and self-actualized societies.
• Integrate Turkey into the Abraham Accords to establish a strong axis of pragmatic, non-apocalyptic Islam.
• Normalize ties with Israel as a regional partner in trade, security and scientific advancement — not as a messianic threat.
• Fuse Kemalism with Libertarianism to combine institutional reform with civil liberty and crush the tribal complex.
• Replace martyrdom cultures with economic liberalism that prioritizes life, dignity and opportunity.
• Establish conservative modernism as the only viable doctrine suited to Middle Eastern reform.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Conservative Modernism: A Roadmap for Sustainable Peace in the Middle East appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Before the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Islamic terrorism was not well organized. Mohammad Reza Shah, Iran’s last monarch, laid the groundwork for the rapid growth and spread of Islamic terrorism by severely suppressing progressive and liberal forces in the country.

With liberal and progressive forces weakened, Islamic terrorist forces led by the cleric Ruhollah Khomeini seized control of the Iranian government in 1979 in a massive coup against the inhumane Pahlavi Dynasty. With Iran’s resources at their disposal, Islamists were able to terrorist organizations in countries across the Middle East.

Iran Supports Islamic Terrorism

The attack on the American embassy and the suicide bombing on the headquarters of the barracks in Beirut on October 23, 1983, was a major turning point in how Islamists carry out terrorist operations. 241 US soldiers, 58 French soldiers, and six civilians were killed in the attack on the barracks. The culprits were affiliated with Iran.

These attacks ushered in an age of unending Islamic terrorism. But who is responsible for this disaster?

Inaction from Western governments regarding terrorism, especially from the US, sent a direct message to Iran’s leaders: you are allowed to establish and arm terrorist organizations. Western leaders did not have the determination and courage to respond to the new terrorist threat because they did not recognize or understand the ideological nature of the other side.

After these attacks, a joint plan to attack the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and centers in Lebanon was planned and approved by the presidents of the US and France. However, the US Secretary of Defense lobbied and successfully stopped it, claiming there was no clear evidence of Iran’s role in the previous attacks.

The leaders of the free world, especially the US, continue to be double-minded and indecisive in dealing with Iran and its terrorist regime. This wrongheaded policy created a suitable environment for the growth of Islamic terrorism and turned our world into a less safe place.

The formation of and its September 11 attacks, the rise of and its assault on the — including the abduction and sale of thousands of Kurdish women as sex slaves — numerous terrorist attacks across the West, and the profound sense of insecurity in these nations, culminating in the terrorist attack against Israel and Iran’s subsequent missile attacks against Israel in April and October 2024, highlight the consequences of failing to address Tehran decisively.

The Appeasement Policy

After almost five decades of toward Iran, the October 7 invasion of Israel by Iran’s proxy, Hamas, pushed Israel to take a defensive posture and cut off the arms of the Islamic terrorist regime by attacking the source of the satanic ideology: the Islamic Republic of Iran itself.

Unfortunately, the international community and the free world still insist on this appeasement policy. For this reason, Israel is alone in the fight against terrorism, bearing the weight of the world in its struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Poor policy choices concerning Iran’s support of terrorism do not end there. On September 28, the US announced an with Iraq to withdraw American troops from parts of the country. This is likely the beginning of another global disaster produced by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The withdrawal will mean the complete handover of Iraq to Iran, providing a safe space for Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist organizations affiliated with Iran to hide from Israel by moving to Iraq. If this agreement is implemented, Iraq — with all its riches — will become a hub for the growth and spread of Islamic terrorism supported by Iran.

This will nullify all Israeli efforts to combat terrorism supported by Iran, as well as all Western efforts to create a secure Middle East. If Western countries are not more decisive in dealing with Islamic terrorism, our future will be more uncertain.

History has shown that Iran is the head of a snake. To kill a snake, you have to cut off its head. This is not an endorsement of an all-out war with Iran. Instead, free countries, especially the United States, should support liberation movements in the region. This support should be extended to the Kurds, who may be powerful enough to destroy the Islamic Republic but presently lack international support.

The lack of support from Western countries for the Iranian popular in December 2017 and and the Kurdish Woman, Life, Freedom movement that started in 2022 sent a message to the Islamic Republic that it can carry out its crimes domestically and continue its terrorist activities internationally without fear of retribution.

The West must end the appeasement policy with Iran and crush the snake’s head in Tehran by supporting the progressive and liberal movements of the Iranian people, thereby ending five decades of terrorism fostered by Iran.

[Joey T. McFadden edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Islamic Republic of Iran Should Be Overthrown appeared first on 51�Թ�.

After your speech observing India’s 78th Independence Day on August 15, you may wish to convene the best and the brightest minds around you to respond to the country’s most pressing internal security challenge, one which no Indian political leader has had the courage to confront let alone take any steps to resolve: the sinister designs that Muslims on the Indian Subcontinent have for India.

Their plans are all the more dangerous given the overthrow of the Bangladeshi government, after which, quite expectedly, outfits like the came crawling out the woodwork. HuT is an Islamic terrorist organization that positions itself as a political party. On August 9, it organized a rally in Dhaka and demanded the establishment of the . Such Muslim fundamentalists see India as a colonizer state, in the same vein as the US and the UK. I am sure that your National Security Adviser Ajit Doval is telling you the same thing I want you to understand: India’s neighborhood has become exponentially more dangerous than before.

Some home truths for you to note��

Before I carry on, it is my duty as a well-wisher and as a concerned citizen to point out some important truths.

First, you insisted on making the 2024 elections a referendum on your name. Now, there are no prizes for guessing where the buck ought to come to a grinding stop for the underwhelming result.

Second, ten years have vanished since 2014, the year when you won a historic first mandate. In another blink of an eye, the next election will be upon us in 2029. Soon, it will be 2047, the target year you have set for Viksit Bharat (Developed India). Even you know that this is your last term and that you are running out of time.

Third, Hinduism’s holy texts repeatedly warn of the perils of (ego). Both and enemies have accused you of this failing. So, I advise you to get a grip on your ahankara. Shrink-wrap and freeze it. Instead, adopt , Mr. Prime Minister. This will do you good and, more importantly, it will bring the nation tremendous benefit.

Fourth, you tried to win the Muslim vote through massive welfare schemes. Yet, unlike Jawaharlal Nehru, you did not win their hearts and minds. You certainly did not win Muslim votes. Indian Muslims , tactically and effectively against you in 2024. Consider it carved in stone they will never vote for you and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Fifth, you underestimate your enemies. The opposition, thuggish, bereft of all scruples and decorum, will do anything — anything — to defeat you and obtain power. The English media in India follows the country’s strange brand of secularism that has a romantic view of sharia. This scotch-drinking elite is happy for Muslims to marry four times and, together with their friends and family members in academia, wants the BJP out of power. The same holds true for Bollywood and left-leaning non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Sixth, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), more appositely known as the Indian Arrogant Service, is India’s deep state and is implacably opposed to you. IAS officers have come through an examination system designed by the Congress Party’s left-leaning ideologues. For their entire careers, they have benefited from rent-seeking by embodying a still-colonial state. They do not want any change. You have succumbed to their flattery and are surrounded by an IAS mafia that does not allow anyone access to your presence. Hindu organizations and devout Hindus have little standing in your administration, but IAS officers who were communists during their St. Stephen’s College days can get things done in hours, if not minutes, by calling IAS officers who work in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Seventh, the international ecosystem of the Left is your mortal enemy. For them, you are the butcher of Gujarat who slaughtered thousands in 2002. The American press calls a “Hindu supremacist” and “Hindu fascist.” For them, you are an Indian version of Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. Yet you crave approval from this ecosystem and ignore your supporters. 

Eighth, centuries of colonization have made Hindus indifferent to their long-term civilizational interests. Extracting all the salt from the earth’s oceans is an easier task than awakening the fractious, argumentative and chronically ineffective Hindus. Under your prime ministership, we had a shot, but you have blown that opportunity most spectacularly. If and when voters turn to the opposition, it’s highly unlikely your party will ever return to power. EVER. Then it’s over for India and her Hindus.

The pathetic state of Hindus

Allow me to dwell on the division and weakness of Hindus here for a moment. And no, this is not some fake, doomsday, clickbait claim, but rather extrapolated from the views of two of India’s greatest leaders: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. The first is credited (falsely) with winning our independence, and the second is credited (rightly) with being the chief architect of our constitution. Love them or loathe them, but dismiss their views at your peril, Mr. Narendra Modi.

Gandhi , “Hindus are cowards and Muslims bullies.”��The venerable leader offered no solution to this conundrum. Gandhi suggested that Hindus could sacrifice their lives for the Muslims if they wanted to establish their rule over India. Gandhi did not believe in fighting back even during the darkest days of pre-Partition violence.

Ambedkar, who was no friend of Gandhi but his political and ideological adversary, was a bare-knuckled on Islam and Muslims. His are as relevant today as then: “To the Muslims, a Hindu is a Kaffir. A Kaffir is not worthy of respect. He is low-born and without status. That is why a country which is ruled by a Kaffir is Dar-ul-Harb to a Musalman. Given this, no further evidence seems to be necessary to prove that the Muslims will not obey a Hindu government.” He commented on the “adoption by the Muslims of the gangster’s method in politics” and stated, “The fact remains that India, if not exclusively under Muslim rule, is a Dar-ul-Harb and the Musalmans according to the tenets of Islam are justified in proclaiming a jihad.”

That jihad is underway not only in Pakistan but also in India. The now-banned Popular Front of India (PFI) plans to make India Islamic by 2047. Authorities have seized PFI plans that “creating a civil war-like situation” in India. They also uncovered “a short course on how to make improvised explosive devices (IEDs) using easily available materials” and pen drives containing videos related to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

In India, few leaders have taken on the problem of Islam like their European counterparts. French President Emmanuel Macron has against “Islamist separatism” and the dangers of Muslims forming a “counter-society” in France. Retired French generals have of “civil war” in the country.

Note that Muslims have marched in Germany Sharia law. In the recent UK elections, Muslims organized themselves on exclusively Islamic issues through the “The Muslim Vote.” The BBC on a Labour candidate who faced “abuse and intimidation” from supporters of an independent Muslim candidate. Australia has also started “Islamic sectarianism.” Muslims self-separating in non-Muslim countries is inevitable given the Quranic not to befriend Christians and Jews. We Hindus are much worse because we are not People of the Book, but idol-worshippers.

When the Muslims of India plan to make India by 2047, they are not trifling. World history records Islam’s consistent pattern of lethality towards non-Muslims. Shia Iran has targeted the peace-loving and Sunni Saudi Arabia still has no space for non-Sunni communities. In India, Muslims conducted ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Kashmir in the early 1990s.

That ethnic cleansing is a precursor to what many Muslims plan for the entire subcontinent. The PFI of 2047, when political power is to return to the Muslim community from whom it was unjustly taken away by the British. It’s entirely in character, given that Muslims also dream of getting back — most of which they have not held since the Middle Ages. The saying that Muslims never forget and Hindus never remember has an element of truth.

Alarming trends call for immediate action, Mr. Prime Minister

Al Jazeera, the flagship media organization funded by gas-rich Qatar, has emerged as the voice of the Muslim world. It , “Between 1951 and 2011, the Muslim population [of India] rose from 35.4 million to 172 million. The Hindu population rose from 303 million to 966 million in the same period.” That works out to a 391% increase in the Muslim population as compared to a 218% increase in the Hindu population. In short, the Muslim population increased at almost double the rate of Hindus for decades after independence.

Demography is destiny in a democracy. If Muslim populations increase, then politicians have to appeal to them. Obviously, some will promise sharia, as Muslims are calling for in Europe. We are facing a clash of civilizations as Samuel Huntington after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Given the times of strife and struggle that lie ahead, we need a good successor to you, Mr. Prime Minister. I take the view that your successor must be Yogi Adityanath, the popular chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Yogi, as this charismatic leader is known, is young (yes, age matters and you are now old, Mr. Modi), dynamic and strong. Yogi is the only political leader in India who has had the courage to shine the light on and the atrocities against Hindus in Bangladesh. Just as you were the future once, Yogi is the future now, and you must give way.

As your parting gift to the nation, you must give Hindus administrative control over their temples. Most of my Western friends are shocked to learn that mosques and churches are autonomous and temples are . Muslims and Christians have the right to run their religious establishments. However, the government controls Hindu temples and even runs them. The IAS lord it over Hindu places of worship but do not dare to intervene even if there is murder or rape in Muslim or Christian institutions. Similarly, Christians and Muslims have the right to run educational institutions whilst Hindus have the same right. Mr. Narendra Modi, free the Hindus finally in their own land.

Mr. Prime Minister, you are a visionary and farsighted politician. So, get your act together and let’s see some bare-knuckled action. Borrow your friend Donald Trump’s phrase and say, “You’re fired,” to Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP party chief Jagat Prakash Nadda — they are both utterly incompetent, and you know it. 

Instead, make alliances, soothe bruised egos and bring back sulking Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders. Once, you were a committed RSS worker. Today, you have abandoned the RSS for the IAS. Go back to your roots, Mr. Narendra Modi.

My advice is straightforward: Reduce ahankara; embrace �ٲ��岵��; announce Yogi as your successor; give Hindus long-awaited religious freedom; fire your two cronies; return to your roots. If you do this and nothing else, history will remember you as the prime minister who successfully prevented India from falling to Islam yet again.

Will you listen and act?

Yours respectfully,

Dr. Sushil Kaul 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Simple Lessons on Islam and Hindu Politics for Narendra Modi appeared first on 51�Թ�.

���ɱ𾱻岹��’s , Reform and Its Perils in Contemporary Islam, focuses on , a well-known Islamic philosopher who pushed for a more liberal and democratic interpretation of Islam. His perspective truly spoke to her.

���ɱ𾱻岹��’s work sheds light on the difficulties faced by those who question traditional Islamic views and the challenges of blending faith with modern life in the Muslim world. Focusing on Abu Zayd was a bold move. His work was complex and controversial, and many scholars advised her against it. However, Abu Zayd’s strong belief in an Islam that supports liberal democratic norms, human rights, and personal freedoms resonated deeply with Oweidat. She saw him as a kindred spirit who, like her, wanted to find a way to make faith and modernity work together.

Both brilliance and hardship marked Abu Zayd’s life as a scholar. Born in 1943 and growing up poor in rural Egypt, he was a gifted learner, memorizing the Quran by age eight. Despite his family pushing him towards a more practical career, Abu Zayd never lost his passion for Islamic thought. He kept studying while working as a telecommunications civil servant, eventually getting his PhD and becoming a professor of Islamic thought at Cairo University.

Abu Zayd’s life illustrates both the intellectual rigor required and the personal sacrifices involved in advocating for reform. His commitment to intellectual honesty and a more liberal interpretation of Islam led to severe backlash from conservative scholars and clerics. He eventually had to flee Egypt and seek refuge in the Netherlands due to persecution and accusations of apostasy.

The future of Islamic reform amidst socio-political challenges

Oweidat distinguishes between Islamic modernism, which seeks to reconcile faith with modern values, and political Islam, which aims to impose Islamic law on all aspects of society. Abu Zayd opposed political Islam, viewing it as a threat to personal freedoms and the true spirit of Islam. 

According to Oweidat, reforming Islamic thought faces two major roadblocks: outdated ideas and a hostile socio-political climate. Reformers such as Abu Zayd face the daunting challenge of reinterpreting Islamic texts, which have served as justifications for oppressive practices for centuries. They contend with deeply ingrained beliefs and traditions that are difficult to change. Additionally, the socio-political environment is often hostile to reform. Authoritarian regimes, conservative religious institutions, and extremist groups make it very difficult to spread and gain acceptance for reformist ideas.

When asked about the future of Islam, Oweidat admits it’s uncertain. She emphasizes the significance of individual choices and decisions made by governments and societies in shaping how Islamic thought evolves. Thanks in part to social media, there is a growing diversity of voices within the Muslim world.

[Peter Choi wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Reform and Its Perils in Contemporary Islam appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Related Reading

What Happens When Nationalists in Israel and India Team Up

The authors then delved into Indian society, claiming that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu organization formed in 1925, engages in violence against “unarmed, unsuspecting civilians … using batons, machetes, strangulation, sulfuric acid to the face and rape, among other horrors.” They drew an ill-considered comparison between Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank and the actions of cow vigilante groups affiliated with the RSS.

The authors also referenced the horrors of the 2002 Gujarat riots but presented a biased account of the train compartment burning, an event that incinerated 58 Hindu sadhus. They labeled the communal riots as “state-sponsored terrorism.” The authors further alleged that the US has turned a blind eye to the “antidemocratic and all-too-violent national visions” of India and Israel.

As an Indian student, I’ve identified numerous inconsistencies in the article. I find many of these allegations baseless and inconsiderate. Therefore, I am presenting a point-by-point rebuttal of the article.

Muslims receive special treatment despite Islam’s violent past

India’s geographical landscape has a complex history shaped by over a millennium of military campaigns. During these, the Islamic invaders progressed relatively slowly compared to the rest of the world. For instance, the Arabs Sindh multiple times starting in 636 AD, and finally seized the province in 711 AD. It took Islamic forces over 300 years to capture Kabul and nearly 500 years to conquer Delhi. Nonetheless, after a valiant resistance, the Brahman Shahi Sultanate of Kabul fell to the Ghaznavid Empire in 1026 AD.

After that, Islamic invasions in the Indian heartland became more brutal and frequent. After the of Tarain in 1192 AD, Islamic rule was established in Delhi. It lasted until 1858 when the Mughal Empire was replaced by the British Empire. During these 650 years, it was the minority Muslims — mostly Turks, Central Asians and Persians — who ruled over the majority of Hindus. During this period, the official of India was Persian and the religion was Sunni Islam. Muslim rulers desecrated and countless Hindu temples. Surprisingly, this historical context is completely overlooked in contemporary debates of Hindu-Muslim relations.

From 1858, the British exhibited a preference for Muslims, recruiting them into civil and military positions in disproportionate numbers. This is evident in the Census of India, 1911 : Muslims constituted only 21.24% of India’s total population but made up 41.94% of the “service of the state,” and 50.33% of the police force. Even in higher salary ranges, Muslims were disproportionately represented, with 37.9% earning more than ₹400 salaries compared to 41.3% for Hindus. According to Pakistani military historian Major Agha H Amin, this policy of preferential recruitment a fundamental reason for the Partition of India.

The extraordinarily tolerant Republic of India

Driven by the demands of the Muslim League, the Partition of India resulted in the bifurcation of the ancient geography along communal lines. Post-partition India embraced Hindu values of inclusivity, tolerance and peace. This is reflected in Part III of the Constitution, containing four articles under to protect the freedom of religion. These articles serve as the foundation for India’s engagement with all religions, granting every religious group the right to manage their religious affairs without state interference.

Furthermore, the constitution safeguards the rights of minorities under Articles and , with the latter specifically designed to protect the rights of religious and linguistic minorities. However, the world’s longest constitution does not define the term “minority.” This empowers the Muslim community to establish and manage religious and educational institutions such as madrasas — schools that specialize in Islamic teachings — with little or no oversight. These schools also receive from the secular government of India, yet the state is not empowered to decide their and recruitment patterns.

Additionally, madrasas also receive largely foreign funding. India even allows establishments such as Darul Uloom Seminary, situated in Deoband, Uttar Pradesh. This madrasa is infamously known as the ideological of the Taliban. After independence, India disregarded any perceived animosity towards Muslims and granted them equal rights, if not more, in the newly established democratic republic.

Indian Muslims are governed under the Sharia

While independent India granted equal rights to all citizens, it faced challenges in reforming the Muslim society. The successive governments did not replace the British-era of 1937. Initially designed to create distinctions between Hindus and Muslims in the lead-up to the partition, this legislation granted numerous privileges to Muslims.

The act permits a Muslim man to have up to four wives, stipulates that Muslim men only need to pay alimony for three months, allows double inheritance for sons compared to daughters and includes several provisions that can never be permitted in other democracies. (, an Islamic form of divorce whereby a Muslim man can legally end a marriage by saying “talaq” — “divorce” in Arabic — three times, was allowed until the Indian Government repealed it in 2018.) The successive governments also viewed Muslim society as a vote bank. They continue viewing Muslims through the lens of maulvis, Muslim doctors of law. This meant abhorring any possibility of reforming the Muslim Personal Law. Hence, Muslims of the world’s largest democracy are still governed under Sharia.

In 1973, the Muslim society formed the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB). This body acts as the highest religious and legal authority over Islamic laws in India. The AIMPLB’s stated is to “eradicate all non-Islamic rituals and customs in [the] Muslim community.”

This body is predominantly filled with ulemas, groups of Muslim scholars with special knowledge of Islamic theology and law. Their qualifications are generally shady. The AIMPLB has a checkered history: The organization has opposed , the right to , an increase in women’s age and marriages. They support return to Kabul and desire to open in a constitutional democracy, the latter of which would create a second judicial system that would diminish the value of the first. Most recently, the body called terror attacks a “natural reaction to Israeli atrocities.”

While AIMPLB lacks executive powers, their influence on Muslim voters makes them an extremely important part of Indian politics.

The Government of India also introduced a distinctive safeguard for Muslim religious bodies through the . First implemented in 1954, this globally unparalleled legislation grants governing rights over religious and charitable lands to Muslims. No other religious group in India has such a favorable regime for religious land management.

The necessity for this legislation arose in the aftermath of the Partition of India. Many Muslims migrated to Pakistan, leaving their properties in India behind. Consequently, the Indian Government decided that their properties should be allocated exclusively to Muslims. The Wakf Act, 1954 established , Muslim committees that dedicate property permanently to religious or charitable ends, to oversee this process.

This act was later replaced by the Waqf Act, 1995. It granted expanded powers to the waqf boards. Under this act, waqf boards practically have the authority to claim any in India as their own. Unsurprisingly, they rank as the third-largest landowners in India, following the army and railways. The shrewd nature of this act has drawn from legal luminaries and scholars, with concerns about its constitutionality. Regardless, it is still in effect in India.

As a result, the Muslim society enjoys not just constitutional equality but also preferential treatment in the form of Sharia-driven laws, AIMPLB and the Waqf Act, from the Indian state. Considering this, writers who make exaggerated allegations about discrimination against Indian Muslims demonstrate a poor understanding of history and contemporary events. When the Indian Government decides to reform Muslim personal laws, regulate the obscure functioning of madrasas and form AIMPLB to ensure proper representation of Muslim society, it is blatantly ignorant and hypocritical to claim oppression.

Too many communities engage in hate speech but the Indian state does not discriminate

In recent years, India has witnessed several incidents of against Muslims. The and have understandably noticed such events and have enacted stringent legislation to address this menace.

Regrettably, acts of hate speech have been a facet of India’s ugly political landscape, given its multi-ethnic composition. In South India, social activist EV Ramaswamy was known in his heyday for making vociferous hate speeches against the . A spokesperson from the , the ruling party of the state of Tamil Nadu, recently made a speech calling for Brahmin genocide.

Radical groups are equally involved in several incidents of hate speech. Just two years ago, Muslim groups rioted, committed arson and openly called for the of Nupur Sharma after she quoted Ḥadīth verses — statements of words and actions of the Prophet Muhammad — from Sahih Bukhari, a key Islamic text. In of India, every few months, radicals call for “sar tan se juda.” This Islamic slogan means, “separate the head from the body,” and is a for the decapitation of blasphemers.

Therefore, it is essential to understand that these incidents of hate speech do not necessarily reflect the larger policy of the state or a community. Many such incidents arise due to the politicization of local sentiments. Hence, these hate speeches should more appropriately be viewed as law and order issues rather than indicative of the national sentiment.

The status of Indian Muslims remains unchanged, resembling the situation before. Consequently, India is a unique place where all varieties of Muslims, including Shia, Sunni and coexist as equal citizens in the republic. They represent diverse ethnicities such as Pashtun, Punjabi, Bihari, Gujarati, Bengali, Kannada, Kashmiri, Tamil and more. They have equal opportunities for education, work, mobility and sustenance, like other religious groups. In fact, Indian Muslims have far greater rights than Ahmadis in Pakistan, Sunnis in Iran and Shias in Saudi Arabia. Critics of India in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the BBC, Al Jazeera and 51�Թ� might do well to note that everyone in India, including Muslims of all denominations, are equal in the eyes of the law.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Does India Oppress Muslims? Not Now, Not Ever. Here’s Why. appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Additionally, rooted in , Iran’s self-perception as the defender of oppressed Muslims globally is fueled by the anticipation of the twelfth Imam’s messianic return. This often translates into support for proxy groups and regional interventions.

Iranian ideology is deeply rooted in the nation’s historical and cultural identity. Iran sees itself as the inheritor of the longstanding Persian civilization, a proud nation with a rich heritage and a history of resisting foreign domination. This fosters a sense of exceptionalism, a conviction that Iran’s path is unique and its interests paramount, often leading to tension with other regional powers and the West. Furthermore, Anti-Zionism is deeply within the ideology, viewing Israel as an illegitimate entity occupying Palestinian land. This translates into strong support for Palestinian groups.��

In the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world Iran’s revolutionary ideology presents a destabilizing order and a direct threat to the existence of Israel.

Iran’s pivot and the shifting balance of power

The in Iran, spearheaded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, marked a watershed moment in the nation’s history. Though predominantly in its initial stages, the revolution involved protests, strikes, and civil disobedience. However, the Shah’s regime responded with harsh repression, leading to a significant rise in casualties among protesters. This ultimately contributed to the gradual disintegration of the Shah’s government.

The revolution culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi monarchy and the establishment of an Islamic republic based on the concept of Wilayat al-Faqih. This ideological foundation, enshrined in the 1979 (amended in 1989), emphasizes principles such as justice, independence, self-reliance, resistance, and martyrdom.

Iran’s claim to legitimacy transcends the 1979 revolution, drawing its from millennia-long influential civilizations and empires. This rich history, encompassing the Elamites, the Achaemenids, Parthians, Sassanids, and Safavids, has indelibly shaped Iran’s cultural identity and instilled a profound sense of national pride. As the historical seat of power for empires stretching across the Fertile Crescent and into Central Asia, Iran’s past serves as a cornerstone for its aspirations for regional leadership, both historically and in the contemporary era.

This sense of historical grandeur further shapes Iran’s foreign policy, which has often clashed with that of Western powers and their regional allies. This has led Iran to pursue a strategy, aimed at countering western pressure and sanctions imposed due to its nuclear program and regional activities. This policy gained momentum following the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal () and the perceived failure of European signatories to uphold their commitments, leaving Iran economically isolated.

Iran’s deep-seated opposition to in the Middle East stems from a perception that such policies destabilize the region and threaten its security and interests. Consequently, a key objective of the Pivot to the East strategy is to bolster Iran’s regional influence and establish itself as a leading power in the Islamic world, a position it believes reflects its historical legacy and rightful place.

While Iran promotes a transnational Islamist model, its influence is largely confined to Shia communities, which are minorities in most Muslim-majority countries. Nonetheless, Iran’s assertive foreign policy, including its support for specific regional groups, has been a factor in destabilizing the Middle East. Former Iranian foreign minister, M. Javad Zarif this policy ‘sacrificing diplomacy for the military field’ in an interview with Saeed Leylaz.��

The eastward gaze: Iran’s Pivot and the rise of an authoritarian Axis

Recent years have witnessed a growing convergence between Iran and other authoritarian regimes sharing a common opposition to Western influence. It describes what I call the Axis of Totalitarianism: a coalition of authoritarian regimes that challenge the democratic world order, encompassing Iran, China, and Russia. While not constituting a formal alliance, these countries exhibit strategic convergence and a shared desire to challenge the US-led unipolar world order.

This convergence manifests in various forms of cooperation. Notably, Iran and China have a significant 25-year strategic partnership agreement, facilitating substantial economic investment in Iran’s energy, infrastructure, and transportation sectors. This agreement underscores China’s growing economic influence in the region and its potential to provide much-needed economic support to Iran. Similarly, Iran and Russia have their existing 20-year cooperation agreement and engaged in joint military exercises, demonstrating their strategic coordination and willingness to collaborate on security matters. Notably, Iran has supplied Russia with ballistic missiles, further deepening their military cooperation in defiance of international sanctions.

A key driver of this convergence is the shared opposition to U.S. dominance and perceived Western interference in the region and globally. These countries view the current US-led world order as unfair and unjust, advocating for a multipolar world order that would redistribute power and influence. This shared objective fosters cooperation and strengthens their collective stance against perceived Western interventionism.

Beyond the core trio of Iran, China, and Russia, other actors with authoritarian tendencies have displayed varying degrees of alignment with this emerging axis. Notably, an Iranian official recently to the Taliban as part of an axis of resistance, suggesting a potential for cautious rapprochement between the two entities.��

Similarly, Iran has been a staunch supporter of the Assad regime in Syria, providing both military and financial assistance that has been crucial in helping the regime regain control of territory from rebel groups. While not directly involved in the Middle East, North Korea’s aggressive stance towards the West has fostered diplomatic ties with Iran. North Korea maintains close alliances with Russia and China. Pyongyang has vocally supported Russia’s war in Ukraine, the annexed regions and parts of Georgia. In recent years, North Korea has in joint naval exercises with Russia and China in the Indo-Pacific region, suggesting a trilateral partnership aimed against the US and its allies.

Historically, North Korea and Iran have in the military and nuclear fields. This alliance dates back to the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s when North Korea supplied Iran with weapons and technology. Since then, North Korea has aided Iran’s ballistic missile program development. Reports suggest joint missile development projects and technology transfers between the two countries.����

The destabilizing messianic mission

Iran’s foreign policy is heavily influenced by its adherence to Twelver Shi’ism. This branch of Islam anticipates the of the twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, to establish a global Islamic order. This eschatological belief imbues Iran with a sense of responsibility as the custodian of the Shia faith and champion of the oppressed, translating into a perceived mission to propagate Islam, defend the downtrodden, and pave the way for the Mahdi’s emergence. Furthermore, Iran views itself as the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad and his , the Prophet’s family, and claims to uphold the authentic interpretation of Islam embodied in their teachings and practices.

One prominent manifestation of Iran’s Islamic ideology in its foreign policy is the concept of against perceived enemies of Islam and Iran. Iran positions itself as the leader of the , a network of state and non-state actors united in their opposition to the United States, Israel, and their regional allies. , sharing Iran’s ideological and strategic objectives of challenging the status quo and defending Shia interests, form a crucial component of this network.

These groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Palestine, the Houthis in Yemen, and various Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, Iranian support in the form of arms, training, financial aid, and political guidance. In return, they serve as force multipliers and instruments of deterrence for Iran, expanding its influence and leverage in the region. Often wielding significant political and social influence alongside their military capabilities, these groups maintain close ties to Iran’s Supreme Leader. They frequently coordinate their activities with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force, responsible for the country’s external security affairs.

The activities of Iran’s proxy groups have had a cascading and devastating impact on the stability and well-being of the Middle East. Their presence and involvement in regional conflicts have directly fueled humanitarian crises, such as:

— A 2021 by the International Crisis Group documented how Hezbollah’s growing influence in Lebanon has hampered the formation of a stable government and hindered efforts to address the country’s economic crisis. In Yemen, the Houthi conflict has over 4 million people internally, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and plunged the country into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

— OCHA over 306,887 civilian deaths in the Syrian civil war, a conflict fueled in part by Iranian support for the Assad regime. Amnesty International has also various Iran-backed militias in Iraq of extrajudicial killings, torture, and arbitrary detention, further eroding respect for human rights and exacerbating sectarian divisions.

— The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) that over 12.4 million people are displaced across the Middle East and North Africa due to ongoing conflicts. The destruction of infrastructure and disruption of essential services, often a consequence of proxy group activity, further compound the humanitarian suffering in the region. OCHA that over 2.4�� million children in Yemen lack access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene due to the ongoing conflict.

The legacy of revolution: how Iran’s anti-Zionism threatens Israel

At the core of Iran’s anti-Zionism the fundamental rejection of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state. This perspective views Israel’s establishment as a colonial project infringing upon Palestinian land and rights. Iran’s with the Palestinian cause, intertwined with both religious and moral imperatives as well as strategic and political interests, fuels its anti-Zionist stance. This manifests in Iran’s support for various Palestinian factions, particularly those advocating armed resistance against Israel, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.��

Furthermore, Iran envisions a single, democratic state encompassing historical Palestine, where diverse communities coexist, effectively calling for Israel’s dissolution. This aspiration is further emphasized through Iran’s participation in the annual International , a symbolic display of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Iran’s anti-Zionism translates into tangible security challenges for Israel. Firstly, it underpins the formation of the Axis of Resistance alliance with Syria and Hezbollah. This alliance as a conduit for projecting Iranian power in the Levant region, posing a direct military threat to Israel’s northern border. Iran bolsters this alliance through extensive financial, military, and political support, enabling the development of missile and rocket capabilities, intelligence networks, and military infrastructure.��

Iran’s military presence in Syria, including bases and personnel stationed near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, further intensifies the potential for confrontation. This alliance has demonstrably materialized in several instances, including the 2006 Lebanon War, the ongoing Syrian Civil War with its spillover effects, and the 2024 Golan Heights incident.

Secondly, Iran’s anti-Zionist ideology drives its efforts to expand its influence and presence in other regional areas, including Iraq, Yemen, and the Gaza Strip. In these regions, Iran and arms various groups who actively attack Israel and its strategic allies. Iran has provided the Houthis in Yemen with missiles and drones used against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both considered strategic partners of Israel. Similarly, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip receive Iranian assistance in the form of rockets and funding, enabling them to engage in repeated cycles of violence with Israel, as exemplified by the 2024 Gaza War. Furthermore, Iran cultivates ties with various Shia militias and political parties in Iraq, some harboring animosity towards Israel and threatening potential attacks.

Thirdly, Iran’s anti-Zionism is intricately linked to its pursuit of a nuclear and missile program, concerns about the potential development and delivery of nuclear weapons. This program has been a focal point of intense international scrutiny. It led to negotiations, sanctions, and even sabotage attempts. Despite these pressures, Iran uranium enrichment beyond the limits set by the now-abandoned 2015 nuclear deal.

Furthermore, in their missile program, encompassing the testing and development of various ballistic and cruise missiles with the potential to reach Israel and other regional countries, further escalate anxieties. This pursuit of nuclear capabilities, coupled with the possibility of transfer to proxies or allies, fuels fears of regional proliferation and potential military confrontations. Israel, viewing a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat, has repeatedly threatened strikes to prevent such an outcome and has reportedly carried out covert and overt attacks on Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure.

Iran’s Islamic revolution and its ambition to stand against the unipolar order, centering itself as the leader of the Islamic pillar of the multipolar world is a destabilizing order and an existential threat to Israel.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Iran’s Revolutionary Ideology Is the Architect of a Destabilizing Order appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In history, man has realized that there must be a God that transcended everything, although he cannot perceive this deity with his usual senses. As time passed, the spontaneous realization of God gradually evolved into institutions that we now refer to as religion. People sought religion to address their concerns about natural phenomena and the powers that control them. Therefore, it is not surprising that the essence of all major world religions remains the unity of mankind. It is founded on the belief in the one and only God, which is worshiped through the multitude of idols in Hinduism, the Trinity in Christianity and the oneness in Islam.

When these three major religions are cleared of all man-made innovations, they boil down to many of the same virtues. They promote honesty, trust, compassion, love, peace, cooperation and brotherhood. They prohibit dishonesty, betrayal, theft, rape and murder. They inspire us to help the poor and disadvantaged. The following is a brief discussion of God as he is presented in these religions.

God in Hinduism

Among the world’s major religions, Hinduism is believed to be the oldest, between . It is rooted in monotheism, the belief in a single omnipotent God. In about 2,000 BC, an early Vedic hymn titled, Origin of All Things, set the foundation for by referring to God as the source of life:

There was neither aught nor naught, nor air, nor sky beyond.

What covered all? Where rested all? In watery gulf profound?

Nor death was then, nor deathlessness, nor change of night and day.

The One breathed calmly, self-sustained; nought else beyond it lay.

As time passed, the deity was called the Brahman — “supreme, lord, eternal, unborn, imperishable.” He put in motion “creation, preservation, and destruction.”

Over time, Hindu writers went overboard in creating deities to illustrate the Brahman. He is now represented by over gods, vying for superiority. This is head-scratching for many. However, the hymn leads wise believers to one conclusion: “God alone knew how the world came into being.”

Hinduism’s core values are based on the purpose of life and ethical virtues. It teaches that given how our universe is created, it is in our best interest to work together for the well-being of mankind and other species. The primary belief of Hinduism is of a universal God. It perceives a pure, wakeful, omnipresent intelligence that created and maintains the universe. It professes the mindset that a clever person should have: He knows that God is beyond the grasp of knowledge, he sees God in every being and he does not get fixated on his choices in achieving eternal life.

Hinduism has influenced and been influenced by other religions. In particular, the faith has influenced Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism. It shares numerous concepts with the Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — including the soul (atman) and personal, loving devotion to a deity (bhakti).

The peaceful spirit of Hinduism must not be confused with the bigoted zeal of its followers in attacking minorities in India, especially and . The country is considered extremely for women. The (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has disgraced the faith by the minority Muslims and polarizing Hindus against them. In the 2002 Gujarat massacres, Modi allegedly other officials not to intervene as Hindu mobs killed Muslims. As punishment for failing to stop the massacres, the United States banned Modi from entering the country for years.

God in Christianity

Around 2,000 years ago in the early 1st century AD, Jesus Christ was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of his virgin mother, Mary. He was one of Abraham’s descendants. He rose among the Israelites and performed countless miracles.

According to biblical scholars, Jesus’s ministry began with his baptism by . He that besides worshiping the one God, people should treat others the way they want to be treated. His kind demeanor and peaceful approach provided a positive passivity permeated with intense love and charity toward others.

In his lifetime, Jesus attracted a few dedicated followers. But his message of compassion resonated in the hearts of millions long after him. His teachings became the doctrine of a new religion, dubbed Christianity.

Jesus called the to return to God and observe the commandments laid out in the , the Jewish holy law. In Jesus’s spoken language of Aramaic, God is called . This is cognate to the Arabic word ilah, the root of Allah (al-ilah, “the God”), the name Arabs and Muslims would go on to use when referring to God.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus , “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.” He , “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” Even as the Romans crucified him, he , “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

The were written years after Jesus. So, some contradictions and inaccuracies are not surprising. However, one thing is clear in all four gospels: Jesus preached the worship of only one God. On occasion, the scribe’s imagination scandalously stretched, Jesus or the Holy Spirit with God.

His message clearly shows that Jesus worshiped the single God, Alaha. This defies the Trinity, an innovation that emerged years after he was gone. The idea of the , rooted in “threefold”, was first used by (d. 200) in his small circle.��

In the 4th century, the (325), discussed Christ’s relationship with the Father and formalized the doctrine of the Trinity, declaring Jesus to be “of the same substance” as God. Yet the word “trinity” does not appear anywhere in the four Gospels. Matthew does appear to refer to it with the formula, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” However, that statement does not imply that the three are equal or the same.��

As for the , Jesus’s teachings hang on two : First, you must love God with all your heart, soul and mind. Second, you must love other people as you love yourself.

Jesus’s early followers considered themselves Jews by birth or conversion. They believed in the Jewish God and Jesus as the Savior, considering him the prophesized Jewish mashiach, or messiah. They insisted on following Jewish laws and rituals. They believed God would destroy their enemies and set the stage for the coming . He would gather all Jews and bring justice and peace, specifically to Egypt.

Jesus’s disciples lived alongside other Jewish sects, such as Essenes, Sadducees and Pharisees. Some of them were referred to as and . Jesus’s early followers closely obeyed his teachings. These peaceful people lived by loving their neighbors, adversaries and persecutors. In the Bible, they never referred to themselves as , although that name was given to them in the pagan city of Antioch. Jesus never gave a name to the faith or followers. However, they considered themselves those Jews who worshiped the one God and exercised for one another.

Christ preached for people to love one another unconditionally. The aggressively vicious behaviors of Christendom must not be bemused with his teachings. In his , The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, wrote: “Jesus did not bring peace on the earth, but a sword; his patient and humble virtues should not be confounded with the intolerant zeal of princes and bishops, who have disgraced the name of his disciples.”

God in Islam

In 610 AD, in a forgotten land that interested neither Romans nor Persians, a middle-aged man undertook a task no man had ever achieved: to unite mankind. His only weapon was his passionate conviction in the oneness of God, and thus the oneness of humanity. Like Noah, he was patient, persistent and faithful to God. Like Abraham, he reasoned to explain his ideas in a simple language that his people could easily comprehend. Like Moses, he spoke only a few words, filled with wisdom and meaning. Like Jesus, he was humble, compassionate, forgiving and looked after the sick and orphaned. His eloquence pierced the hearts of his listeners.

In his early years of preaching, no one beyond his close family joined him for fear of retribution from the tribal chiefs. After preaching for 13 years in his hometown of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, few people followed him. That only made him more determined. His perseverance finally paid off when he left his home; his teachings changed the desolate Arabian peninsula and the world. This brilliant man was , the Prophet of Islam.

Muhammad preached , an Arabic word meaning, “submission to the will of God.” This was the continuation of God’s message to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus. He spoke of the one God, , Who him:

Say: He, God is one.

God is He on whom all depend.

He begets not, nor is He begotten.

And none is like Him.

As for the oneness of God:

If there were, in the universe, other gods besides God, there would have been confusion!

1,400 years ago, Muhammad superstitions and the tradition of following the paths of ancestors. He called people to think, reason and reflect.

At a time when women had little value, Muhammad men and women equally. When men considered daughters shame and killed them, Muhammad preached rights and privileges for women and forbade the people from molesting and hurting them. When the economy ran on the toil of slaves, Muhammad encouraged people to set them for and . He championed opportunity and people to give to those less fortunate what they loved for themselves.

These days, we must all have a keen mind when absorbing information. The propaganda against Islam must not fool us that the US has disseminated across the globe. It is perpetuated to distract from domestic issues, cover for atrocities and justify interventions in Muslim countries. The Western support of the Israeli against Palestinians clearly demonstrates that the West has long abandoned its Christian values.

To retake a page from , we can say: “[Islam] is free from suspicion or ambiguity; and the Koran is a glorious testimony to the unity of God. The prophet of Mecca [Muhammad] rejected the worship of idols and men, of stars and planets, on the rational principle that whatever rises must set, that whatever is born must die, that whatever is corruptible must decay and perish.”

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A US-led invasion ousted the Taliban from power in 2001. Despite their removal, they continued to wage a guerrilla war against the Afghan government and foreign forces. Fast-forward to 2021. The world witnessed a seismic shift in Afghanistan’s geopolitical landscape when the Taliban launched a massive offensive and seized control of the country. This resurgence followed the US announcement of its withdrawal, marking the end of a 20-year war. The Taliban declared they would re-establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, a statement that would reverberate globally and complex questions about the legitimacy of their rule.

The Taliban assert their legitimacy as Afghanistan’s rightful rulers although they have the support of neither the Afghan populace nor the global community. The organization’s claim to legitimacy is rooted in its ideology, relying on three pillars: its supposed connection to the Afghanistan’s historical emirate, its Pashtun ethnic identity and its adherence to the Deobandi school of Islam.

Rekindling the emirate

The Taliban’s right to rule starts with their self-proclaimed position as heirs to Afghanistan’s historical monarchy, officially called the Emirate of Afghanistan. in 1826 by Emir Dōst Moḥammad Khān, the emirate symbolized unification under Pashtun leadership and staunch resistance against foreign incursions, particularly from the British and Persians. It marked the country’s first independent state, solidifying its borders and identity.

While facing internal and external challenges like the and , the emirate witnessed significant advancements. Constitutions, flags, anthems, a currency, postal systems and even a nascent railway network all marked notable strides during this period. In 1926, the emirate came to an end when Emir Amanullah Khan declared Afghanistan a “kingdom” with himself as king. The name change marked a shift to a more modernizing, Western-influenced style of governance.

The Taliban strongly both a kingdom and a republic as incompatible with their Islamic ideology. They view an emirate as the sole licit, authentic political system for Afghanistan. This stance is further bolstered by their adoption of the original emirate’s name, flag and symbols. They see themselves as its rightful successors, inheriting its legacy and its responsibility to safeguard Afghanistan’s sovereignty against foreign influence.

In their narrative, the British, Soviets and Americans as historical invaders and enemies, while their own resistance is a sacred — a struggle for moral correctness. The internationally recognized government and its security forces were illegitimate collaborators in their eyes, puppets of foreign powers. The Taliban strive to establish a pure Islamic state governed by their understanding of Sharia law, with the emirate’s revival serving as a cornerstone of their legitimacy claim.

The horrific obsession of the Deobandi school

Building upon their historical connection to the emirate, the Taliban further bolster their legitimacy with their strict adherence to the Deobandi school of Islam. Born in 19th-century India, emerged as a reformist movement that emphasized strict adherence to the Quran and Sunnah, traditional Islamic practices, and social reform. While not entirely rejecting the four conventional Sunni schools of jurisprudence, Deobandis prioritize the direct interpretation of religious texts. They advocate for a literal, conservative understanding of Islam.

This ideology fertile ground in Afghanistan, particularly among rural Pashtun communities. Deobandi madrasas — colleges dedicated to Islamic study — flourished, educating generations of scholars and religious leaders, including many future Taliban members. The Taliban embraced Deobandi principles as their official creed, shaping their vision for an Islamic state governed by an unwavering understanding of Sharia law.

The Taliban’s specific interpretation of Deobandi principles led them to impose an austere version of Islam in Afghanistan. They music, art, entertainment and for women, viewing these things as incompatible with their morality. Religious minorities, deemed heretical or infidel, faced persecution. While these actions are justified by the Taliban as upholding Deobandi doctrine and defending Islam, they are broadly by Deobandis and the international community.

Crucially, this Deobandi foundation imbues the Taliban’s claim to legitimacy with a unique character. Their fight is cast as a divinely ordained crusade, drawing authority directly from God. This renders modern concepts like democracy and nation-states obsolete in their eyes. They see themselves as instruments of God’s will, liberated from the need for earthly validation through elections or global recognition. This divine mandate, they argue, justifies their actions and grants them unyielding support from their devout followers.

Assimilation, xenophobia and Pashtun identity

The Taliban also draw their legitimacy from their ethnic identity. They are predominantly , members of the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. Primarily located in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, Pashtuns approximately 42% of the population. For centuries, Pashtuns have not simply inhabited Afghanistan, but have played a role in shaping its destiny, leaving a legacy that the Taliban now weaponize as their birthright to leadership.

Prior to the ascendancy of the Pashtuns, Mongol and Turkic dynasties ruled Afghanistan. The 18th and 19th centuries witnessed the rise of Pashtun like Hotak, Durrani and Bārakzai. Their empires stand as testaments to Pashtun political prowess and influence. The Hotakis challenged the Mughal Empire’s dominance by capturing Kandahār Province from them. The Durranis established an empire stretching from Mashhad in Persia to Kashmir and Delhi in India. The Bārakzais shaped the of modern Afghanistan and founded the emirate.

This legacy forms the bedrock of the Taliban’s narrative. The Pashtun identity they claim suggests an inherent right to rule stemming from ancestral ties and past achievements. They argue that Pashtuns are not merely Afghanistan’s largest minority but the core of its national identity. For the Taliban, the term “Afghan” itself as an synonym of “Pashtun.” (The name, “Afghanistan,” meaning, “Land of Afghans,” first appeared in the 1879 following the .)

Beyond their historical narrative, the Taliban draw heavily on , a deeply ingrained ethical and social code that governs Pashtun life. This intricate tapestry of values, encompassing ������������ٲ���́ (hospitality), ��ə�Բ�����́�ٱ� (asylum), nang (justice), ������á�� (revenge) and ��ú���� (bravery), serves as a cornerstone of their legitimacy claim. They portray themselves as not only rulers, but caretakers of this moral code.

The Taliban that Pashtunwali forms the bedrock of Afghan identity. They propose that other ethnic groups in Afghanistan either share Pashtun ancestry, having assimilated into their cultural sphere over centuries, or have embraced Pashtunwali as their own moral compass. This assertion of cultural hegemony is another vital argument in their narrative, suggesting that their leadership is not merely a political choice, but an imperative for maintaining moral and cultural unity. The Taliban’s ideology is a hybrid and synthesis of the Pashtunwali and Deobandi schools of thought, which complement and reinforce each other.

The Taliban’s emphasis on Pashtun identity breeds xenophobia. Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks face suspicion, and even demonization. The Taliban ignore their legal and cultural systems in favor of a rigid of Pashtunwali and Sharia law. The Pashtuns’ language, Pashto, flourishes in education and government while other languages wither. Representation in these spheres is deeply imbalanced, stoking resentment among excluded groups. The most brutal manifestation of this xenophobia is the Taliban’s use of violence and intimidation, creating a climate of fear that silences dissent. This exclusionary approach sows deep societal fissures, jeopardizing Afghanistan’s fragile unity.

The Taliban’s rule remains at odds with the desires of the Afghan people and the principles of the international community. As long as this fundamental dissonance persists, the question of legitimacy will continue to cast a long shadow over Afghanistan’s future, with profound consequences for its stability and prosperity.

[ edited this piece.]

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Now, 23.6% might not sound like a lot if you are an American. In a two-party system like that of the US, the winning candidate generally takes more than 50% of the vote. On the other hand, the Netherlands has a multiparty system. No less than 15 different parties won seats in the Dutch parliament this year. So, for the PVV to wrest nearly one-quarter of the seats is a big deal.

For most political analysts, Wilders’s victory came as a huge surprise. It represents a sudden turn of Dutch politics to the hard right. Although his victory is surprising, Wilders is no newcomer to politics. The 60-year-old is the longest-serving member of the Dutch parliament. He first got elected in 1998 as a member of the center-right Liberals. Wilders quit that party in 2004 over what he considered Liberals’ softness towards Islam and founded the PVV in 2006.

Wilders is anti-immigration and anti-Muslim. But his profile is not that of a stereotypical, narrow-minded bigot. Wilders is from Venlo, a small city in the conservative, mostly Catholic province of Limburg. He was raised a Catholic himself, making him a religious minority in the historically Protestant Netherlands. Wilders has Indonesian ancestry on his mother’s side. He spent two years on a kibbutz, a collective farm, in Israel. And he married a Hungarian immigrant. So you could hardly say that Wilders has no appreciation for multiculturalism.

But Wilders has taken a strong tack against the Dutch Muslim community. In his view, Muslims have failed to assimilate into Dutch society. For example, 68.76% of Dutch Turks voted for the Islamist Turkish presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — a far higher percentage than among Turks in Turkey. Such voting gives credence to Wilders’s argument that Dutch Muslims are not absorbing liberal European values.

In fact, Dutch voters are worried about Muslim ghettos as breeding grounds for crime and extremism. The 2002 assassination of anti-Muslim politician Pim Fortuyn and the 2004 assassination of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Dutch Moroccan youth are still fresh in their memories. So, they have turned to Wilders.

Demographic shifts lead to tensions across the West

The fears and frustrations that Dutch voters are experiencing are real. They are shared by voters across Western Europe and North America. Demographic shifts are bringing clashes of fundamental values between immigrants and natives. But while the right is perceiving a real problem, the solution that it presents is a horrible one. Singling out an ethnic group as the problem may be a prelude to violence. A mixture of legitimate concern and populist racism is what is driving the right today.

A pattern common to all human societies is now playing out in Europe. Research in sociology tells us that whenever about 10% of the population becomes “other,” there is a hostile reaction. No matter how tolerant a society, things change when it begins to feel threatened. Before the US Civil War, northerners thought of themselves as tolerant, abolitionist Republicans. After the war, black freedmen started to fill the North, and racism flared up. The nativist Know-Nothings reacted to black and Irish newcomers as if they represented the collapse of civilization.

Now, France and Germany have even more immigrants than the US does. The pattern is playing out across Europe. Declining birth rates create a shrinking economy. This creates a demand for immigrant labor. These immigrants bring their own religion and values. They also compete with natives for resources and jobs within the shrinking economy. Economic pressures exacerbate cultural ones, and sooner or later violence breaks out.

A question of religion is a question about the very identity or existence of a society. Two men might duel over a woman, but entire societies go to war over religion. Both France and Germany have a long history of religious civil wars and so does the rest of Europe.

European nations may not be Christian as they once were. But they are strongly attached to basic values like secularism, liberalism and constitutionalism. Now, Muslims live across Europe. Their white neighbors have doubts whether Muslim loyalties lie with the constitutional order or sharia law. Conversely, Muslim Europeans deeply resent having their loyalties questioned. Tensions continue to build.

Javier Milei claims victory in Argentina

The far right is on the rise in other parts of the world. Religion is not always the cause though. In Argentina, economic collapse has fueled the rise of the far right.

About 100 years ago, Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world. Now, it is a basket case. The International Monetary Fund has lent it $44 billion, a third of the fund’s entire debt portfolio. This dwarfs the aid it lent to Pakistan. Argentina’s annual inflation is a heart-stopping 185%. Public corruption is endemic, employment low and poverty high.

Desperate for a change, Argentineans have elected the outsider libertarian candidate Javier Milei. A devotee of Milton Friedman, Milei is rabidly anti-Keynesian. He wants to dismantle many government ministries and make the US dollar Argentina’s official currency.

But it’s not just his economic policies that are oddball. Milei enjoys cosplay, he’s a self-proclaimed tantric sex expert, and he has four cloned mastiffs of his old dead one. He admits to consulting his lovely dogs when he needs to make major decisions. In a Catholic country, Milei has flirted with conversion to Judaism, and he has railed against Pope Francis. Note that the pope is the first Argentine to occupy this holy position and is popular in the country. Milei has called Francis a “communist turd” and a “piece of shit.” In brief, Milei seems nuts.

Once the home of the socialist Eva Perón — herself quite a celebrity populist — Argentina has now swung all the way in the opposite direction.

[ wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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— , “World’s Biggest Pilgrimage Now Underway, and Why You’ve Never Heard of It!”

We haven’t heard of Arba’een because the media is primarily interested in negative news, embellished tabloids and controversial matters. Positive news and inspiring stories are often ignored, especially when they relate to Islam. When a few hundred protest in Russia, China or Iran, it makes headlines. When millions gather for the world’s greatest peaceful annual event, with the longest continuous free dining table and sleep accommodations, none of it paid for by any government or corporation, all in defiance of imminent terror, it routinely fails to make a single headline. When it somehow does, it gives hope to humanity that universal peace is achievable!

Last year, despite the threat of the Covid pandemic still persisting and terrorist bombings among crowds, around people from across the world gathered in Iraq and participated in the event.

Pilgrims are not inhibited by terrorists from participating in Arba’een. In contrast, it draws out more pilgrims in masses in defiance, displaying a faith in humanity never seen before anywhere around the world. 

Arba’een breaks across ethnic, racial, religious, and national barriers. Although it began as a Shi’a Muslim pilgrimage, its participants include Sunnis, Ibadis, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Yazidis and Zoroastrians.

Nevertheless, Arba’een has its roots in tragedy. The festival marks the end of the 40-day mourning period for the 7th-century barbarous killing of Husayn ibn Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson and the third Shi’a Imam. That happened in Karbala, Iraq, around 1350 years ago by the order of the tyrannical Umayyad Caliph Yazid.

This year, Arba’een falls on Safar 20th in the Islamic lunar calendar, corresponding to September 6th. Millions of people from around the globe will gather in Iraq’s holiest city of Karbala to commemorate it, one of the most revered Islamic religious occasions. 

Who was Husayn ibn Ali?

The death of Husayn is considered a formative tragedy in Islamic history. In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon said, “In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.” His heroic life and death inspired countless generations.

To know Husayn, we begin with when Muslims wanted to reward the Prophet Muhammad for his services. Allah commanded him, “Say: I do not ask you for any reward for my services except to love my blood family.” (Quran 42:23). The blood family of the Prophet was above all Fatima, his only living child, her husband Ali and their sons, Husayn and Hasan. holds that the Prophet said of the lad, “Husayn is from me and I am from Husayn.”

Husayn’s life was tragic from the very start. In 632, when he was 6 years old, his beloved grandfather, the Prophet, died.

Before his demise, the Prophet gathered the Muslims and gave them his farewell speech. On the return from his last pilgrimage to Mecca, he commanded all the over a hundred thousand pilgrims to meet him there. He said that it was his last pilgrimage and that he would leave them soon. People cried uncontrollably. In his long speech, he reminded people about their religious duties and Allah’s commands for them to love his blood family.

Then, he introduced Ali, his son-in-law and Husayn’s father, as his heir and the leader of all Muslims. At the end of the speech, the people rushed and gave their allegiance to Ali. This paved the way for Husayn himself to eventually inherit his father’s claim to leadership.

If the demise of his grandfather was not painful enough for Husayn, another tragedy was in waiting. Ignoring Ali’s claim, some men moved to the leadership for another claimant. The ringleaders rushed to Ali’s house to secure his allegiance since Ali’s influence was immense. According to Shi’a tradition, Fatima, Husayn’s mother, intervened to save her husband. The men attacked her. She was badly injured and miscarried her baby, whom the Prophet had named Muhsin. Consequently, she died within six months of her father’s death. At 6, Husayn had now lost both grandfather and mother within a short time. 

Among Muslims, Fatima has been considered something like a First Lady of Islam. The outrage provoked by Fatima’s brutal death saved the rest of the Prophet’s family and their small group of supporters, Shi’as, from being killed by the authorities. However, they were mostly kept under house arrest.

After the death of the third Caliph, Uthman, the people rushed to Ali’s house begging him to take the power. Ali consistently refused. After three days of riots, Ali finally consented under certain conditions, ruling only by the Quran and the Prophet’s traditions. They all agreed. 

Soon, the rich and powerful people realized that Ali was not giving them any favors as the previous Caliphs had done. They deserted him, rallying around the Umayyad governor of Syria, Mu’awiya. Ali’s rule lasted less than five years. In 661, while prostrating at the mosque of Kufa, a city in Iraq, Ali was fatally struck in the head by an assassin’s poisoned sword. He died three days later from the wound. Hasan, Ali’s oldest son, succeeded him, but Hasan’s rule lasted only a few months before he was forced to abdicate in favor of the Mu’awiya, the first Umayyad caliph. The group left Kufa and resettled in Medina.

In 670, Hasan was poisoned and died. At 44, Husayn had lost his mother, father and brother. Now, he was the only living son of Ali and Fatima. Husayn became the patriarch of the Prophet’s family and leader of the Shi’as. Mu’awiya did not find Husayn an existential threat to their power and chose to ignore him rather than force allegiance on him.

A heroic death in resistance to tyrants

In 680, all that changed when Mu’awiya’s son, Yazid, ascended to power. He wanted allegiance from everyone in the empire. Disobedience meant death. was no exception.

When Yazid’s ultimatum was formally presented to Husayn, he skillfully asked for a night time to think over it. After tough negotiation, he got the time. That night, when everyone was in deep sleep, he took his family and headed for the safe haven of Mecca. Muslims were strictly forbidden to fight in the holy city. Many of the Shi’as followed him. 

In Mecca, Husayn received many letters from the people of Kufa imploring him to come there. He pondered over them. As the annual pilgrimage to Mecca neared, he realized that the holy city was not safe, either. Yazid had sent spies among pilgrims to kill him. Husayn hurriedly gathered his family and the Shi’as, and they secretly headed for Kufa. 

Yazid soon learned of Husayn’s move towards Kufa. He sent one of his commanders, Hur, to block Husayn’s path. Husayn and his company were forced to reroute to Karbala, on the Euphrates River. There, Husayn and his male companions numbered about one hundred. Within a few days, they were surrounded by over 30,000 armed soldiers, all with orders to kill Husayn.

Husayn spoke before the enemy soldiers reminding them of what the Quran and the Prophet have said about him and his family. All fell on deaf ears, except for the ears of Hur, who had a change of heart.

Husayn managed to negotiate for one last night to be with his family and companions. That night was critical. Husayn wanted to ensure those who would remain with him truly believed in his mission. In a tent in the middle of the desert that night, Husayn had all the males gathered. He frankly told them all that the enemy wanted to kill him. They did not need to have themselves killed for his sake and should feel free to leave him. He even asked whoever owed someone a debt to leave. Then, he turned off the candles so that people would not feel embarrassed to leave. Some people left, but those who stayed uttered words that history would never forget. Zuhair ibn Qayn, Husayn’s devoted follower, , “By Allah, I would love that I be killed, then revived, then killed a thousand times in this manner if it keeps you with the young ones from your family.”

On the next day, Muharram 10, 61 AH (October 9, 680 AD), Hur along with a few of his soldiers somehow deserted the camp and joined Husayn. He begged for forgiveness, which Husayn readily accepted. For what he had done, he insisted on being the first one to face the enemy. When Husayn consented, he and his company fought bravely and killed many soldiers before they were killed.

Abu Wahab Abdullah ibn Umayr, a Christian who had just married, overheard Husayn speaking before the enemy forces. Wahab was touched, embraced Islam and joined Husayn. When he was killed, his bride begged to go and fight the enemy. When Husayn tried to discourage her, she replied, “Please do not ask me to go back! I prefer to die fighting rather than to fall captive in the hands of the Umayyad clan!”

When the soldiers threw Wahab’s head to his mother, she threw the head back and said what we have given for Allah, we do not take back. With that statement, she grabbed a weapon and killed at least two soldiers.

The companions begged Husayn to allow them to be the first to defend him. One by one, they fought bravely until death. Next, his brothers volunteered, fought and died. Abbas, Husayn’s half-brother, known for bravery, attempted to save the family from thirst. He broke through enemy lines and reached the Euphrates. On the way back, he was brutally wounded and killed. Today, his mausoleum is across from that of Husayn.

There were around 80 who died in defense of Husayn and his family on that day. Just like today’s pilgrims, Husayn’s companions came from varied persuasions. They all knew that Husayn was right, standing for justice and against oppression.

As the day wore on, the hostile Umayyad force was restless and impatient to kill Husayn. Husayn before facing the enemy: “I will be patient with whatever you decree, my Lord. There is no deity but you. You are the helper of those who seek help. I have no Lord except you, and no one to worship except you. I am patient with your wisdom, O rescuer of the one who needs rescue. O you who are eternal and everlasting. O you who bring the dead back to life. O you who observe the action of every soul. Judge between me and them, for you are the best of judges.”

Before being attacked, Husayn looked at the enemy asking them why they were so determined to kill him. According to , they responded, “We will kill you out of hatred for your father.” Husayn fought bravely, sending many of his assailants to their deaths. Finally, he fell. Killing him did not satisfy the enemy’s thirst. They severed his head and ran their horses over his corpse. 

After the ordeal, only one male, Husayn’s oldest son Ali, who was sick with fever, survived.

Thereafter, the forces ransacked Husayn’s tents, captured its inhabitants and took them as slaves to Yazid in Damascus.

The Umayyads’ fury against the family of the Prophet knew no limits. They started the tradition to celebrate the occasion by urging people to fast on that day. Today, many Sunnis follow suit. Across the world, Shi’as follow the traditions of mourning that day and feeding the poor and needy.

Despite exhibiting the utmost savagery, though, the Umayyads spared the sick, women and children. Today, military forces are more ferocious. They indiscriminately kill men, women and children without feeling any remorse.

This year, Muharram 10 fell on July 28. Millions of people from around the globe gathered in Karbala to commemorate Husayn’s death. On September 6, they will break their period of mourning in the peaceful festival of Arba’een.

Husayn’s words should be written in gold: “Anyone who keeps silent when others are being oppressed is himself considered to be guilty of oppression.” I am unable to locate the source of this popular quotation, but it certainly encapsulates the meaning of his famous in which he condemned the Umayyad tyranny and the lackeys who failed to oppose it. Husayn refused to be like them and submit, uttering the which would become like his epitaph: “Death with dignity is better than a life of abasement.”

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Between September 17, 2022, and January 23, 2023, Iranian security forces 525 protesters during the nationwide protests in response to the murder of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was taken into custody by Iran’s religious morality police in September last year. Sham trials and unjust executions have begun, and, according to the most recent figures, at least 100 of those who have been arrested are in imminent danger of . Yet the protests have not stopped.

The new wave of protests poses a serious challenge to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s security apparatus. The distinctive unity that has emerged among Iranians is unparalleled. In fact, Iran is experiencing a unity that has not been seen since the 1979 revolution. Simultaneous protests in more than 200 cities have exhausted security forces. 

A Spontaneous Uprising, Not a Minority Movement

This new uprising has not been organized by any party or organization from abroad. It has occurred organically and is led by Iranians who reside in the country. The regime falsely lays the blame on Kurdish “” who receive aid from foreign services and on opposition groups outlawed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Other non-Persian groups often blamed include Arabs and the Baluch.

Scapegoating non-Persians in Iran is not a new strategy. The establishment has done this for more than four decades in response to any sort of protest against injustice, corruption, or incompetence in the government. This strategy of scapegoating minorities has failed this time. The majority of Iranians do not believe in the phony claims of the Islamic Republic strategists. In fact, the nationwide solidarity is so strong that Persians have been chanting . For example, Jin, Jian, Azadi is translated into Farsi as Zan, Zendegi, Azadi, and it is translated into English as the now-familiar “Woman, Life, Freedom.” In addition, Azeris have been slogans supporting Kurdistan, and protests have taken place in in solidarity with Kurdistan and vice versa. 

As protests intensify, the Islamic Republic of Iran accuses the Kurds of separatism. The myth that Kurds are responsible for Iran’s woes has been partially successful for more than four decades. Persians, domestic or those in exile, do not accept the idea of a Kurdish state. Therefore, it has been relatively easy for the Islamic Republic to crack down on Kurds in the name of “fighting separatists” without facing any criticism from the Persian opposition groups in or outside the country.

A History of Kurdish Persecution

Iranian Kurds are mainly concentrated in the four northwestern and western provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, West Azerbaijan, and Ilam. A group of Kurds have also settled around Quchan in the northeastern province of Khorasan. They have a history of rebelling against Tehran. 

The previous Iranian regime, led by Reza Shah and then his son Mohammad Reza Shah persecuted Iranian Kurds as well. In 1967, the Iranian military crushed a Kurdish uprising and six of the movement’s leaders, five of whom were executed in Sanandaj, the capital of the Kurdistan province, one of Iran’s majority-Kurdish provinces. 

It is important to note that the Shah’s Iran supported Kurds in Iraq to weaken their western neighbor. It even sent two military units into Iraqi territories to help Mustafa Barzani, one of the prominent Iraqi Kurds who led numerous insurgencies against Baghdad, in the 1960s and 1970s for an independent Kurdistan. Iran changed this policy when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi struck the 1975 with Iraq. 

This ended their dispute over the Shatt-al-Arab (Arvand Rud) border and Iran withdrew its support for Iraqi Kurds. After this, both countries turned on the Kurds. Because of the Shah’s betrayal, Iranian Kurds took an active part in the 1979 revolution. They hoped for autonomy and a Kurdish parliament after the revolution.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not grant the Kurds any autonomy or self-rule. In fact, he crushed the Kurdish resistance brutally. Khomeini appointed Sadeq Khalkhali as the chief justice of Iran and sent him to the Kurdish areas along with a convoy of executioners. He also sent the military and the IRGC to crack down on the Kurds. Khalkhali hundreds of Kurds to death by firing squad in sham trials. The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDP-I) and Komele, a Marxist party in Iranian Kurdistan, were both outlawed. However, resistance continued in Kurdistan’s mountains. 

Injustice, Especially Economic, Fuels Minority Resentment

Generally, separatist movements among minorities are a result of injustice by the majority. In Iran, both before the 1979 revolution and after, minorities have been treated as second-class citizens. They have been deprived of fundamental rights and basic resources. Despite being known for its rich diversity of different ethnicities such as Kurds, the Baluch, Arabs and Azeris, Iran’s only official language is Persian. This means that children in Kurdistan or Ahwaz are deprived of studying in their mother tongue. 

This one-language policy leads to intense disregard of scholars with minority backgrounds. When the only official language is the language of the rulers, it leads to a bitter atmosphere among the minorities. Other acts of persecution lead to further resentment and many of Iran’s minorities desperately want autonomy if not freedom from the iron grip of Tehran’s mullahs.

As is well known, economic grievances often cause protests and revolutions. In Iran, poverty and unemployment are running high. Minorities are suffering the most. According to the of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the national gross product of provinces of Sistan and Baluchistan, Kurdistan, and Ilam are among the lowest in Iran. 

Poverty and a high unemployment rate have forced many Iranian Kurds into the minacious path of becoming a kolbar, a uniquely Kurdish word that literally translates as a porter who carries goods on his shoulders. These men risk their lives by carrying heavy loads of more than 60 kilograms of goods via mountainous donkey paths from Iraq into Iran while dodging bullets from the Iranian border patrols for a pittance. The mortality rate of the kolbar is very high. In 2022, 290 were .

Other ethnic groups are suffering enormously as well. The Baluch who live in the Sistan and Baluchistan province on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan lack economic opportunities, suffer from high unemployment rates and have low access to education. Discriminatory policies have forced many into becoming soukhtbars, which is Farsi for fuel porters. During one day alone on February 22, 2021, Iranian security forces at least 10 soukhtbars, including a 17-year-old boy. 

It is obvious that there is a great unity among Kurds, other ethnicities and the Persians during the current protests. However, Kurds, Baluchs and Arabs have only had bitter experiences with the central government in Tehran. Two Iranian regimes in a row have failed to treat non-majority ethnic groups with dignity and respect. Neither the Shahs nor the Ayatollahs have delivered a fair share of the pie to other ethnicities who live far away from Tehran. This raises the very important question: What might a third Iranian regime do to minorities? Will it continue the despotic and discriminatory policies of the previous regimes? Or will minorities finally get the autonomy, justice and respect they deserve?

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Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but its 120,000 inhabitants are predominantly ethnic Armenians. They broke away from Baku in the early 1990s and Yerevan supported their fellow Armenians. This led to a war in which Armenia emerged on top. By 1993, Armenia not only gained control of Nagorno-Karabakh but also of Azerbaijan.

In 2020, war broke out again. Thanks to Turkish drones and large-scale military operations, Azerbaijan regained much of the territory it lost in the early 1990s. Now, its blockade of the Lachin Corridor is inflaming passions yet again.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken got Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azeri President Ilham Aliyev to meet in Munich. The post-Davos Munich Security Conference was a convenient excuse for the leaders to get together. Both sides claimed that they had made progress towards a peace deal. Yet a war of words broke out. Aliyev “accused Armenia of occupying Azerbaijan’s lands for almost 30 years.” Pashinyan claimed that “Azerbaijan has adopted a revenge policy” and was using the meeting for “enflaming intolerance, hate, aggressive rhetoric.”

A Tortured Past: Christianity, Islam and Communism

Both Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia tell us that Armenia became the first country to establish Christianity as its state religion. Apparently, in 300 CE as per the former and 301 AD as per the latter, Saint Gregory the Illuminator convinced King Tiridates III to convert to Christianity. The Armenian Apostolic Church is an independent Oriental Orthodox Christian church and has many similarities to the Russian Orthodox Church.

If Armenia is Christian, Azerbaijan is Muslim. In the early 16th century, Ismail I, the founder of the Safavid Dynasty conquered Azerbaijan. Ismail I proclaimed the Twelver denomination of Shia Islam as the official religion of the Persian Empire. While Iran is almost entirely Shia and Sunnis are , Azerbaijan follows a more syncretic version of Islam. The US State Department’s 2021 on International Religious Freedom tells us that Azerbaijan’s “constitution stipulates the separation of religion and state and the equality of all religions before the law.” It also tells us that of the 96% Muslim population, 65% are Shia and 35% Sunni. There is little internecine Muslim conflict, though non-Muslims still have a hard time in the country.

In the 19th century, Russia started gobbling up Azerbaijan as the Persian Empire weakened under the Qajar dynasty. Sunnis fled from Russian-controlled territory to Azerbaijan. As Russia took over, a modern Azeri nationalism arose. It emphasized a common Turkic heritage. Ties with Ottoman Turkey deepened while those with Qajar Persia weakened. To this day, Azerbaijan remains closer to Turkey than to Iran.

Azerbaijan also retains close ties with Moscow. It has spent much of the last two centuries under Moscow’s thumb. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Azerbaijan declared independence in 1918. This did not last long. Under Moscow’s rather heavy hand, the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was formed.

Armenia too is closely intertwined with Moscow. Until World War I, Armenia was part of the Ottoman Empire. Yet war inflamed suspicions about the loyalty of Amenians to Istanbul. Some Armenian volunteers were serving in the Imperial Russian Army. The  infamous 1915 Tehcir Law ordered the of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population to the Ottoman provinces of Syria and Iraq. Death marches into the desert and massacres led to the deaths of 800,000 to 1.5 million people. Forced Islamization of women and children sought to erase Armenian cultural identity and make them loyal subjects of the Ottoman sultan who was then the caliph of the entire Islamic world. This mass murder and cultural destruction has come to be known as the Armenian genocide.

World War I went badly for both Ottoman Turkey and Tsarist Russia. The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres “provided for an independent Armenia, for an autonomous Kurdistan, and for a Greek presence in eastern Thrace and on the Anatolian west coast, as well as Greek control over the Aegean islands commanding the Dardanelles.” The Turks rejected this unfair treaty and fought back. Peace only came with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne that established the boundaries of modern Turkey. A year earlier, the Soviet Red Army had annexed Armenia along with Azerbaijan and Georgia. Universalist communism snuffed out nationalism in this part of the world.

Communism Collapses, Nationalism Rises

In 1923, the Soviet Union established the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast within Azerbaijan. About 95% of its population was Armenian. For the next 60 years, the region was peaceful thanks to the heavy-handed Soviet rule. During the disastrous 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghanistan War, Moscow’s authority weakened significantly. In 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh’s regional legislature passed a resolution to join Armenia. Tensions rose, but the Soviets kept things under control.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, all hell broke loose. Armenia and Azerbaijan achieved independent statehood, and went to war over Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenians in this region declared a breakaway state of Artsakh. This was unacceptable to Azerbaijan. Like the collapse of Yugoslavia, the results were tragic. The war caused over 30,000 casualties and created hundreds of thousands of refugees. As stated earlier, Armenia held the upper hand. 

By 1993, Armenia had gained control of Nagorno-Karabakh and occupied 20% of Azerbaijan’s geographic area. Peace only came in 1994 when Russia brokered a ceasefire that has come to be known as the . This left Nagorno-Karabakh with de facto independence with a self-proclaimed government in Stepanakert. However, this enclave was still heavily reliant on close economic, political and military ties with Armenia.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan were economic backwaters under Soviet rule. In 2011, Azerbaijan struck gold in the form of gas. Baku launched what has come to be known as the Southern Gas Corridor. Azerbaijan wrangled a deal with the European Commission to supply gas as far away as Italy. The country used gas proceeds to buy arms from both Turkey and Russia as well as modernize its military.

In early 2016, a broke out in Nagorno-Karabakh. Most analysts say that Azerbaijan triggered this conflict with the tacit, if not overt, acquiescence of Moscow. For many years, Baku had “been promising to liberate the territories occupied by the Armenians.” Neither were the Azerbaijani troops able to break through Armenian defenses in Nagorno-Karabakh, nor were the Armenians able to launch a counteroffensive. The truce reestablished the status quo.

In 2018, #MerzhirSerzhin—anti-government protests that have come to be known as the Velvet Revolution—broke out in Armenia and swept the old elites out of power. Serzh Sargsyan reluctantly stepped down as prime minister and Pashinyan took over. The new government to loosen ties with Russia without antagonizing Moscow, strengthen relations with Europe, and improve relations with neighboring countries, including Iran and Georgia.

Democracy in Armenia did not lead to peace in the region. As stated earlier, conflict broke out again in 2020. Azerbaijani forces crossed not only into the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh of Nagorno-Karabakh, but also into Armenia. Azerbaijani artillery strikes hit cities and villages deep within Armenian territory. More than 7,000 people died and hundreds, if not thousands, were wounded. Azerbaijan recaptured most of the territory it had lost in the 1990s. Three ceasefires brokered by Russia, France and the US failed. 

Eventually, Russia pushed through a ceasefire and sent 2,000 of its troops as peacekeepers. Armenia had to guarantee “the security of transport links” between the western regions of Azerbaijan and its exclave of Nakhichevan that lies within Armenia.

A Strange String Quartet: Russia, Armenia, Turkey and Azerbaijan

Since 1991, Russia had been Armenia’s main security and energy provider. The shared Orthodox Christian tradition has long made Yerevan Moscow’s most reliable in the region. Armenia is “the sole Russian ally in the region, the only host of a Russian military base, and “the only South Caucasus country to belong to the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation.”

Yet it seems that street protests for democracy sent alarm bells ringing in the Kremlin. Russian giant Gazprom hiked gas prices in 2019, forcing Armenia to make overtures to its southern neighbor Iran. Worse, Russia turned into a primary weapons supplier to Azerbaijan. This led to “a rather surprising crisis in Armenian-Russian relations.” Intelligence sources speak about a deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to back Azerbaijan because the former wanted to teach Armenia a lesson. Putin did not want Armenia to follow the Ukraine example and form the so-called wave of democracy that would sweep him out of office.

Turkey the 2020 ceasefire deal to be a “sacred success” for its ally Azerbaijan. In his characteristically colorful language, Erdoğan described Ankara’s support for Azerbaijan as part of Turkey’s quest for its “deserved place in the world order.” In a nutshell, Armenia-Azerbaijan has become a theater where big powers are yet again playing another version of the great game. Once, the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Empire and the Russian Empire met here in the Caucasus, and jostled for dominance. Another jostling has now begun with Turkey, Iran and Russia—successors to the three empires—playing key roles.

Others have got involved. Unsurprisingly, one of them is the US. On September 11, 2022, Mikael Zolyan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace explained how the West had Russia in mediating the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In reality, the EU is playing a distant second fiddle. As the post-Davos Blinken-led negotiations in Munich have just demonstrated, the US is calling the shots, at least as of now. Naturally, Russia is not too pleased.

Other actors are involved too. Azerbaijan is allowing Ukraine’s military to fuel from its gas stations at no cost. Furthermore, Ukraine has always supported “the integrity of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory throughout the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict” despite having the fifth largest Armenian in the world. Georgia is in Ukraine’s camp and is pursuing both EU and NATO membership. Armenia is home to a major Russian that has ground forces, tanks, air defense, missiles, helicopters and Mig-29 multi-role fighters. These are Armenia’s insurance against total Turkish-Azerbaijani domination. Despite heartburn over Russia’s betrayal in 2020, Armenian public opinion still favors Russia over Ukraine in the current ongoing conflict. The waters in the Caucasus are becoming very muddy.

A Truly International Fight Club

Involvement of distant powers is muddying the waters further. Over the last few years, Pakistan has been self-consciously looking up to Turkey to craft its Islamic identity. The northern part of the Indian subcontinent was conquered by mamluk (i.e. manumitted slave) Turks in 1192. In recent years, Pakistan has been turning to these distant Turkish roots and Erdoğan is even more than the Turkish soap operas that are enthralling Pakistan. The Turkish leader is seen as a true representative of the Muslim world just as historical television drama is viewed as glorifying “the Muslim value system and the Ottoman Empire.” 

It is important to remember that Muslims in British India, modern day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, launched the 1919 Khilafat movement to restore the caliph to his throne in Turkey. They considered the Ottoman sultan to be their spiritual leader. Erdoğan has emerged as a new caliph for Pakistanis, many of whom are willing to fight and die for him.

The 51�Թ� Intelligence (FOI) Threat Monitor concluded that Turkey and Pakistan were institutionalizing strategic relations and developing the characteristics of a military alliance. With the continuing deterioration of Pakistan’s economic and political situation, the supply and willingness of young men to volunteer for jihadi causes is increasing too.

Sadly for Armenia, Pakistan has the capability to support Turkey and Azerbaijan with large numbers of well-trained regular or irregular troops in any future conflict. Pakistani regular military personnel already supplement local forces in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. The Pakistani state has rich experience of training jihadi volunteers in unconventional warfare and then sending them to fight in support of Islamic causes around the world. These irregular forces have appeared in Afghanistan, India, and Yemen, sometimes working with Pakistani special forces. With appropriate incentives, these fighters could be deployed against Armenia to support Azerbaijani and Turkish objectives, possibly in combination with elements of the Pakistani Army.

Luckily for Armenia, India has decided to support this beleaguered Christian nation. In September 2022, the two countries a $245 million worth of Indian artillery systems, anti-tank rockets and ammunition to the Armenian military. Two months later, Armenia a $155 million order for 155-millimeter artillery gun systems. Aliyev, who succeeded his father to become the strongman president of Azerbaijan in 2003, declared India’s supply of weapons to Armenia as an “unfriendly move.” India made this move only after years of provocation by Erdoğan who has sided with Pakistan on Kashmir. According to Glenn Carle, FOI senior partner and retired CIA officer, India’s sale to Armenia makes strategic sense and is a play for great power status.

In a nutshell, the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh has ramifications far beyond the region. The US wants Armenia to emulate Georgia and Ukraine, and join the ranks of free democracies. The EU wants peace in the Caucasus and cheap Azerbaijani gas to replace disrupted Russian supplies. Russia wants the Pashinyan government, which is increasingly unpopular after defeat in 2020, to fall. Yet it cannot and will not allow Armenia, an Orthodox Christian nation, to be completely subjugated by its Muslim neighbors.

Thanks to religion and ethnicity, Turkey and Azerbaijan see Armenia as a historic enemy. Both want to teach Yerevan a lesson. So does Ukraine and perhaps even Georgia. Curiously, mullah-run Iran wants to counter the growing influence of fellow Muslims—largely Sunni Turkey and majority Shia Azerbaijan—in the region. It fears that a powerful Azerbaijan could strive for the integration of Nakhchivan, the Azeri enclave in Armenia, and Azeri-majority areas in Iran. Therefore, Tehran is selling gas to energy-hungry Armenia. Thanks to Pavlovian cultural deference to Turkey, Pakistan sees the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict as jihad and its madrassa-trained young men might provide cannon fodder for this conflict. Meanwhile, India is responding to the pan-Islamism threat of Turkey and Pakistan by supporting a potentially valuable ally. 

The die is cast for a riveting saga, which promises to have more twists and turns than Dirilis Ertugrul.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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India Disappoints Its Friends and Admirers

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The ruling dispensation in the Indian state of Karnataka has invoked Section 133(2) of the . This section says that the “State Government may give such directions to any educational institution or tutorial institution as in its opinion are necessary or expedient for carrying out the purposes of this Act … [and] such institution shall comply with every such direction.”

Claims

On February 5, the ruling dispensation in Karnataka led to a being issued by Padmini S.N., under-secretary of the Education Department of Karnataka, requiring institutions to enforce particular provisions.

First, as per the letter, students must wear a uniform that has been selected by an authority, such as college committees or administrative boards. Second, if the administrative committee has not issued a mandatory dress code, then “clothes which disturb equality, integrity and public law and order should not be worn.” Third, the letter the case of Asha Ranjan vs. State of Bihar and Ors in 2017. It claims that the Supreme Court “accepted the balance test where competing interests are involved and has taken a view that individual interest must yield to the larger public interest.” Fourth, the letter says that the ban on wearing a hijab inside educational institutions is not in violation of Article 25 of the onstitution.

Contesting the Claims

Yet these claims are contestable. First, school management could introduce a uniform for students that is guided by the needs of education and the constitution. Education is concerned with the teaching-learning process. The sartorial choices of students or even teachers do not have any relevance to this process. In fact, preventing students from choosing what they want to wear may impede the fundamental right to education. Further, it cannot be logically argued that the sartorial choice of students impedes the integrity of the teaching-learning process.

Second, it is absurd to claim that clothes can impact equality, integrity and public order. Education is concerned with enhancing the ability of students to participate in social life after they graduate. This includes joining the labor force, participating in the political process, and building and sustaining communities. Inclusive development does not require all people to be part of sartorial (or any other type of) homogeneity, but it does need their participation in socially productive activities. Homogeneity is antithetical to equality with diversity. After all, the of India is “unity in diversity,” not unity before diversity.

Furthermore, claiming that sartorial choices such as wearing a hijab will disrupt public law and order effectively serves as a dog whistle for vigilantes. When these vigilantes engage in actions that undermine public law and order, the original claim is thereby validated.

Third, the Supreme Court, in the case of Asha Ranjan vs. State of Bihar and Ors, argued that there could be conflict between the legal rights of two individuals. In such an event, the interest of the wider community would be used to determine whose rights are prioritized. Yet the individual sartorial choices of students or teachers neither undermine the rights of others nor affect the public. Thus, in this case, the balance test is not applicable since there are no conflicts between individuals with regard to their rights as guaranteed by Article 21 of the constitution.

Fourth, seeking to relate the ban on wearing a hijab (or the clothing choices of students or teachers) solely with Article 25 is legally untenable. In fact, if this standalone appeal to Article 25 of the constitution is made, then it leaves the door open to define religious or cultural practices as being more or less essential to the definition of a religion or culture. Doing so in this current case would directly impact the right to education of some Muslim female students.

The key issue is whether the sartorial choices of students undermine the integrity of the teaching-learning process. The only logical answer is no. The choices of students and teachers are connected to the right to seek education under Article 21-A and the right to dignity under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The right to practice religion or culture, as guaranteed by Article 25 in the present case regarding sartorial choice, does not subvert the teaching-learning process. Therefore, Article 25, when read with Articles 21 and 21-A, demonstrates the legal untenability of the ruling dispensation in Karnataka.

Why Now?

But there is a fundamental question that arises from the ban on wearing a hijab. Why are such issues being raised in the first place? On the one hand, it is undeniable that the ruling dispensation in Karnataka seeks to trigger political debate over social issues, since it may deflect public attention from evaluating the state government’s record over other matters.

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On the other hand, we believe there is a broader background to such moves. Policy initiatives that favor elites and put others at a disadvantage require the latter to provide at least implicit “consent.” This may be problematic if the interests of elites are equated with “national interests” through the deployment of ultra-nationalism. This process of “consent” may be reinforced if divisions emerge among non-elites by stigmatizing and labeling a section of non-elites as the “other.” In India, this process of stigmatization involves the furthering of communalism, which is the political manufacturing of social divides along religious lines.

This manufactured rise in social divides, coupled with other factors such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to an crisis. Rising unemployment, inequality and inflation cannot be overcome with the “toolkit” available to the government. This policy toolkit involves the use of ultra-nationalism and communalism where the pot is always set to boil, causing social tension. The repeated use of such measures has started yielding diminishing results for the government, but it appears to have no alternative policy available.

The way out of this impasse requires a different framework. This needs to involve public , fiscal policy undergirded by progressive taxation, and industry policy backed by mobilization and allocation of resources by the government. Such policies of inclusive development must be part of a process of recentering the constitutional imperatives of secularism, gender and social justice, and democracy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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How Western Media Misunderstand Chinese Culture

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Many readers would see Turkey’s condemnation as a simple case of an Islamist regime railing against Western suppression of Islam. Indeed, the government’s statement was full of accusations of Islamophobia in Europe. Yet such statements, coming out of Turkey, are not as simple as that.

Those same readers might be surprised to discover that Turkey itself had banned headscarves in state institutions until very recently. This might make a governmental condemnation of a ban in Europe seem nonsensical. The reality helps to give context to the Turkish reaction.

Wear Western Hats

Condemnations of headscarf bans might ordinarily be expected to emanate from regimes such as the Iranian theocracy or the Saudi conservative monarchy. Coming out of the secular republic of Turkey, they might appear more curious, if it wasn’t for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s global image as a religious conservative.

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His government’s sensitivity to headscarf bans is very personal indeed. In 2006, his own and other politicians’ wives were not invited to an official event by the then-Turkish president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, due to their wearing of headscarves. In 2007, there was an attempt by the military — a traditional guardian of Turkey’s ruling secular elite — to deny the presidency to Abdullah Gul of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) because his wife wore a headscarf.

Such attitudes, which might appear highly intolerant in countries such as the United Kingdom, make more sense in places like France where the separation of church and state is a foundation of the republic. When modern Turkey was created in 1920, France became the model for how to build a modern state. A key element in the imitation of the French was the desire of Turkey’s first military rulers to suppress Islam.

The Ottoman Empire, of which Turkey was the successor state, was an Islamic empire. Indeed, it was ruled by a caliph, the Islamic equivalent of the pope in Rome. The caliph was the leader of the Muslim world. Turning Turkey into a modern secular republic was akin to removing the pope from the Vatican and banning the wearing of the Christian cross in Catholic Europe. Needless to say, it has created cultural fault lines in Turkey that persist to this day.

To drive home his cultural revolution in the 1920s and 1930s, modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, instituted a ban on the fez — that most famously Turkish of hats — and the turban. He insisted on men wearing the Western brimmed hat, traditionally rejected since it doesn’t allow the wearer to bow their head to the floor in Muslim prayer whilst wearing it.

The veil and headscarf were also discouraged, though the state’s ability to enforce changes in female clothing was slower to be realized than with men’s. The persistence of female cultural clothing as opposed to male could be the subject of an entire essay of its own.

Alongside many other measures, such as the banning of the Sufi Muslim brotherhoods, the closure of mosques, a ban on the call to prayer in Arabic and the removal of the Arabic script, the Turkish authorities attempted to forcibly Westernize Turks.

The Illiberal 1980s

Yet it was not until the military coup d’état of 1980 that Turkey finally outlawed the headscarf officially. It was then that it was banned across all state institutions, including schools, universities, the judiciary, the police and the military. In effect, this meant that girls from religious backgrounds had to choose either to remove their headscarves or not get an education. Only with the rise of the AKP to power in the 2000s did official attitudes begin to shift.

In 2010, Turkish universities finally admitted women who wore headscarves. This was followed a few years later by state bureaucratic institutions, except the judiciary, military and police. In 2016, policewomen were allowed to wear headscarves beneath their caps, and finally in 2017, the military was the last institution to lift the ban.

This is the backdrop against which the Turkish government condemns a headscarf ban — in certain circumstances — decreed by the ECJ. It is a backdrop in which the religiously conservative in Turkey read a narrative of European coercion running back to the founding of the modern state and even earlier.

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The ideas that inspired the military officers who won the Turkish War of Independence — the war with Allied powers that followed the conclusion of the First World War — were imported from Western Europe. Having carved out an almost entirely religiously homogenous Muslim state, they set out to utterly secularize it.

The banning of the headscarf is therefore seen by religiously conservative Turks as an idea imported from Europe and, in some sense, an idea dictated to Muslims by secularized Christian nations. Given the last century of experience in Turkey, it is clear how this view is generated.

Ultimately, the question is one of whether people who like the use of headscarves should tolerate those who don’t wear them, and whether those who dislike the use of headscarves should tolerate those who do wear them. Examples of intolerance abound on either side. A lack of understanding will bring no peace to Turkey or to countries across Europe and the world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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�ʲ��ٲ�’s , Abdullakh Anzorov, is an 18-year-old of Chechen origin. He arrived in France at the age of 6 as a refugee and was granted asylum. In an audio message in Russian, Anzorov claimed to have “avenged the prophet” whom Paty had portrayed “in an insulting way.” Before he was murdered, Paty was the victim of an online hate campaign orchestrated by the father of a student who reportedly might not even have been in the class.

As Agnès Poirier wrote in , since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January 2015, the French seem to be “living [their] lives between terrorist assaults.” Since then, she writes, “Islamists in France have targeted and murdered journalists, cartoonists, policemen and women, soldiers, Jews, young people at a concert, football fans, families at a Bastille Day fireworks show, an 86-year-old priest celebrating mass in his little Normandy church, tourists at a Christmas market… the list goes on.”

Emmanuel Macron, France’s Islamophobe-in-Chief

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Yet �ʲ��ٲ�’s killing has touched a chord. Arguably, no country venerates its history teachers more than France. After defeat against Prince Otto von Bismarck’s Prussia in 1870, the Third Republic emerged. In the 1880s, it took away education from the Catholic Church, making it free, mandatory and secular. Poirier observes that the “peaceful infantry of teachers” has since “been the bedrock of the French republic.”

She poignantly points out that the first generations of teachers were nicknamed “the Black Hussars of the Republic” because they had to battle the local priest for influence. Thanks to these teachers, as per Poirier, “religion was eventually relegated to the spiritual realm.” More than others, history teachers are the keepers of the revolutionary and republican flame, exposing young minds to Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot et al and emancipating their thinking.

French President Emmanuel Macron called the brutal beheading an “Islamist terrorist attack.” At a ceremony at Sorbonne University, he conferred the on Paty. Macron awarded France’s highest honor posthumously to the late history teacher because he died for trying to explain freedom of speech.

Macron has since defended the right of French citizens to publish anything, howsoever offensive others might find that to be. Earlier this month, he , “Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country.” His comments enraged many Muslims inside and outside France.

�ʲ��ٲ�’s killing has shaken France to the core. After more than a century, religion is back to the forefront in the country. This time, it is not Catholicism but Islam.

A History of Blood and Gore

At the heart of the matter is a simple question: Does Islam lead to violence and terrorism? Many Islamic scholars and political analysts argue in the negative. After all, the Catholic Church burned and launched the Inquisition. Jews fled Spain to find refuge in lands. These authors take the contrarian view that Islam can only be a religion of peace after it conquers the world and establishes a supremacy of sharia.

Writing about Islam’s links to violence and terrorism is sensitive and controversial. There are nuances to be sure. However, most scholars know fully well that Islam has a . It rests on the assumption that justice would not be served unless the will of Allah is established all over the world. As per this theory, non-believers in Islam have three choices.

First, they can convert to Islam and become part of the , the global community of Muslims who recognize there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his final messenger. Second, they can refuse to submit to Allah, but they must then flee their homes or face the sword. Third, they can surrender to Muslims and pay jizya, a poll tox for non-Muslims in a state run according to Islamic principles.

Both Sunnis and Shias prize jihad, which denotes both personal struggle and just war. Both Sunnis and Shias believe that jihad is the duty of an Islamic state, should certain conditions arise. There is little daylight between Sunnis and Shias on their ideas of jihad against non-believers. Many Muslim jurists considered the non-acceptance of Islam by non-Muslims an act of aggression that had to be countered through jihad. Like Christianity, Islam lays claim to universality and jihad is its version of a crusade.

Arguably, the most interesting reform of Islamic law occurred when Arabs conquered Sindh in the eighth century. For the first time, Islam encountered Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. A puritanical Abrahamic faith encountered much older spiritual traditions of the Indus and Gangetic river basins. These pagan polytheists were not covered by the Quran. Its verses recognized Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians and the imprecisely defined Sabians. These religions are based on divine revelations and came to be known as , the People of the Book.

The Indo-Gangetic spiritual traditions were clearly not the People of the Book. When Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh, he approached the then-caliph in Damascus for how to deal with Indian polytheists. The fuqaha (Islamic jurists) and the ulema (clergy) in Damascus ruled that these new religions ultimately believed in the very same god as Muslims and the People of the Book. Therefore, through the exercise of qiyas — analogical reasoning as applied to the deduction of Islamic juridical principles — these non-Muslim Sindhis were to be treated as protected minorities if they paid the jizya.

As waves of Muslim invaders came to the Indian subcontinent, conversion took place both through peaceful and violent means. Lower-caste Hindus turned to Islam because it offered a greater sense of community, charity for the poor and egalitarianism. Yet violence was par for the course too. Idols were smashed, temples desecrated and local communities slaughtered.

Muslims who claim that theirs is a religion of peace could do well to remember that even the golden age of Islam is full of blood. The first three caliphs were assassinated. and were brave generals who led aggressive armies and did not hesitate to spill blood.

The exemplifies the violence that has accompanied Islam from its early days. In 680, Umayyad Caliph Yazid I’s troops massacred the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and son of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth caliph. For Shias, it remains an annual holy day of public mourning. This was a bloodthirsty struggle for succession and has led to a Shia-Sunni divide that runs deep to this day.

The Umayyad Empire’s extravagance and decadence led to a successful Abbasid rebellion in 750. The victors invited over 80 Umayyad family members to a grand feast on the pretext of reconciliation. In reality, this feat was the infamous in which the Umayyads were killed in cold blood. was the only Umayyad who escaped, and he fled all the way to Spain to set up the kingdom of al-Andalus.

Violence in Modern Times

Over time, Arab rule became benign. There is a strong argument to be made that Muslim rule was more tolerant than Christian rule in many matters. Minorities who paid jizya carried on with their business and way of life. The Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals governed multi-ethnic empires even as Europe imploded into religious wars.

Once Europe took to technological, industrial and military innovation, the rest of the world fell under its sway. Tottering Muslim empires were no exception. This defeat still rankles among many Muslims. Many have turned inward and hark back to a glory period of Islamic dominance. They dream of the days when Muslim armies swept all before them, including Jerusalem in 1187 or Constantinople in 1453.

After World War II, European colonial rule has been replaced by American economic domination. Oil was discovered in key parts of the Muslim world, including Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, it was Western companies that took much of the profits. Till today, the price of oil is denominated in dollars. The formation and domination of Israel in the Middle East added to this Muslim angst. In 1979, a millenarian revolution succeeded in Iran. In the same year, militants seized the Grand Mosque of Mecca, and it took two weeks of pitched battles for Saudi forces to regain control. The militants might have lost, but Saudi Arabia emulated Iran in hardening sharia and giving more power to the ulema.

In Iran, the new regime killed thousands who did not agree with it. They included liberals and leftists. Led by hardline clerics, the Iranian regime liquidated the minority Bahai sect in Iran. It set out to export its Islamic revolution. In response, the Saudis began to export their own puritanical Wahhabi Islam. Saudi money poured all the way from and India to and Chechnya.

This took place at the height of the Cold War. This was a time when the West in general and Washington in particular were terrified of the Soviet Union. The fear of communism led Americans to intervene in Iran, Vietnam and elsewhere. They made a Faustian pact with militant Islam. The CIA worked with god-fearing Islamists to fight godless communists. These Islamists went on to become a trusty sword arm for the US against the communist menace of the Soviet Union. Nowhere was this best exemplified than the jihad Americans funded in Afghanistan against the Soviets. As is hilariously captured in , the Saudis matched the Americans dollar for dollar.

Eventually, the Soviet Union fell and the West won. As nationalism, socialism and pan-Arabism stood discredited, the battle-hardened jihadis stood ready to take their place. Conservative, fundamentalist, extreme and radical Islamists soon found their spot in the sun. The Molotov cocktail of violence and terrorism spread throughout Muslim societies. Disgruntled young Muslim men in the West found this cocktail particularly irresistible. In the post-9/11 world, there is a mountain of literature that chronicles all this and more.

American action after the attacks on September 11, 2001, have strengthened rather than weakened this culture of violence and terrorism. George W. Bush’s war on terror has proved an unmitigated disaster. In 2003, the Americans unleashed chaos in Iraq by dismantling the Baathist regime and leaving nothing in its place. A Shia-Sunni civil war followed. Iran became a touch too powerful in Iraq. Sunnis who had been dominant during the Baathist era under Saddam Hussein were left leaderless and felt marginalized. In the aftermath, the Islamic State emerged in the vacuum. Syria imploded as well and the Sykes-Picot construct collapsed. The Islamic State’s messianic message of violence and terrorism not only garnered local support, but it also drew in recruits from Europe, South Asia and elsewhere.

Eventually, Syria, Iran and Russia allied together even as the UK and the US collaborated quietly to crush the Islamic State. They were able to destroy it militarily, but radical Islamist ideology lives on. It is the same ideology that powered the Iranian Revolution, the Afghan jihad and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Now, it is inspiring Anzorovs to behead Patys.

A Clash of Cultures

In the aftermath of �ʲ��ٲ�’s beheading, France and Turkey have . Macron has championed freedom of expression, which includes the liberty of publishing cartoons of Prophet Muhammad. Like many of his countrymen, Macron sees freedom of expression as an essential part of France’s secular values. ����ï������é, the French version of secularism, is enshrined in the very first article of the constitution. It declares, “France shall be an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic.” Macron has pledged to “to defend secular values and fight radical Islam.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan takes objection to Macron’s position. He believes that there must be limits to freedom of expression. With millions of Muslims in France and over a billion around the world, the French should desist from insulting Prophet Muhammad. Erdogan sees Macron as having a problem with Islam and Muslims. In a speech, the Turkish leader declared, “Macron needs treatment on a mental level.” In response, France has said Erdogan’s comments are unacceptable and recalled its ambassador to Turkey.

A new kind of Islamism has now entered the scene. Unlike clerics in Iran or royals in Saudi Arabia, Erdogan is a democratically elected leader. Ironically, he rose to power in Turkey thanks to the country’s growing democratization, which in turn was fueled by its quest to join the European Union. In Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secular Turkey, the Islamist Erdogan seized power and brought in a very different vision for the future.

Erdogan jettisoned Ataturk’s Europeanization of Turkey. Instead, he decided to become the popular, democratic voice for Islam. He has championed causes like Palestine, Kashmir and Xinjiang that resonate with Muslims worldwide. Even as the Turkish economy stumbles, Erdogan is taking on Macron as a defender of Islam. Erdogan gains inspiration from the Ottoman Empire. Until a century ago, the Ottoman sultan was also the caliph, the spiritual leader of the Sunni world. In fact, Mahatma Gandhi’s first mass movement in 1919 demanded the restoration of the Ottoman caliphate.

President Erdogan wants to bring back Ottoman cultural glory to Turkey. One by one, he is smashing up the symbols of secular Turkey. A few years ago, Erdogan built a 1,000-room white palace on 50 acres of Ataturk Forest Farm, breaking environmental codes and contravening court orders. On July 10, 2020, he reversed the 1934 decision to convert Hagia Sophia into a museum. Now, this architectural marvel is a mosque again.

France is a land of joie de vivre, which favors bikinis over burkinis. ����ï������é emerged after a bitter struggle with the Catholic Church, is central to the republic and is an article of faith. In contrast, Turkey is rolling back Ataturk’s version of ����ï������é. Erdogan is striving to emerge as the popular Islamic leader who takes on the West, India and even China. He has thus thrown the gauntlet to Macron.

Erdogan has geopolitical reasons to rile Macron. Turkey and France are on opposing sides in Libya’s civil war as well as the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. France has deployed jets and frigates to counter Turkish oil and gas exploration in disputed waters in the eastern Mediterranean. Now, the two countries are squaring off on religion.

The Turkish president is not alone in Macron. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has also accused Macron of “attacking Islam.” Erdogan is urging a boycott of French goods. Many others in the Muslim are also calling for such a boycott. Some shops in Kuwait, Jordan and Qatar have already removed French products. Protests have broken out in Libya, Syria and Gaza.

Secularism vs. Faith

Erdogan’s actions and the support they have garnered raise uncomfortable questions. In the Westphalian system of nation-states, what right does he have to tell Macron how to run his country? More importantly, his rhetoric raises a key question about the world. Who decides what is offensive? Can a popularly elected leader of a former imperial power speak up for co-religionists to another former imperial power or anyone else? If so, are we seeing a drift toward Samuel Huntington’s famous proposition about a clash of civilizations?

This question assumes importance in the light of the past. When Spanish conquistadores took over Latin America, they did not just rape, torture and kill. They killed the local gods and ensured the triumph of the Christian one. In “Things Fall Apart,” the great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe chronicles how Christianity went hand in hand with colonization in Africa. In India, Muslim invaders sacked temples. In Iran, Safavids destroyed Sunni mosques and converted them into Shia ones. In recent years, many have seen secularism as a way out of this maze of centuries-old religious conflict.

Intellectually, secularism is the legacy of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. It involves the shrinking of religion from the public to the private sphere. After all, religious wars tore apart Europe for more than a century and a half. Today, France is thankfully not ruled according to l’ancien regime’s of “un roi, une foi, une loi” (one king, one faith, one law). Unlike Huguenots, Muslims have not been subjected to St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. ����ï������é may not be perfect, but it is much better than the alternative.

Unfortunately, Muslim societies have failed to embrace secularism. From Indonesia and Pakistan to Iran and Turkey, there is a disturbing intolerance afoot. Of course, the West fanned the flames, but now this conflagration inspired by religion is singeing societies, states and even the international order. Earlier this year, the Islamic State group Sikhs in Kabul. By September, most of the Hindus and Sikhs Afghanistan. It is important to note that these communities had lived in Afghanistan for centuries and even stayed on during the heydays of the Taliban.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of American-style capitalism to provide prosperity or opportunity, people are turning again to religion. On October 22, a Polish court banned almost all . In Eastern Europe and Russia, the influence of the church has been increasing. Even benign Buddhists have turned malign and are targeting minorities in Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Yet the scale of what is going on in the Muslim world is different. There are tectonic shifts underway from Islamabad to Istanbul that are disturbing. Minorities are fleeing Muslim countries and radical Islamists like Anzorov are taking to the sword.

Does Macron have a point? Is Islam truly in crisis?

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In the Indian subcontinent, Eid al-Adha is known as baqreed. It is a time of feasting, rejoicing and piety. Unfortunately, for some, it has become a festival in which people compete with each other to sacrifice fine cattle. Not only is baqreed now an occasion to show off wealth, but it is also a time of much animal cruelty. With 600 million Muslims out of nearly 2 billion on the planet living in South Asia, this festival assumes global importance.

Interactive: Ramadan Explained

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This year, Eid al-Adha comes at a poignant time. Around the world, millions have sacrificed much during the lockdowns caused by the coronavirus outbreak. The pandemic has taken and continues to take a heavy toll on life, health and the economy.

In South Asia, the term Muslims use for sacrifice is qurbani — or udhiya in Arabic — a word whose trilateral root, q-r-b, is related primarily to nearness, indicating that “sacrifice” is understood primarily as a means of drawing closer to God. Religions have had a history of sacrifice. Minoan and Aztec traditions included human sacrifice. Over time, religions such as Christianity and Hinduism took to animal sacrifice. If qurbani were to be read as a metaphor, the evolution of religion from the rite of human sacrifice to animal sacrifice is clearly noticeable. The story also demonstrates that sacrifice is an act of ibadah (worship), which is the core of Islam, denoting devotion and piety.

What Is Sacrifice All About?

Sacrifice is not about the destruction of property or taking of lives, but about giving something personal and precious for the larger social good. In a society where people did not have enough to eat, slaughtering cattle was a way to feed the hungry and the destitute. It was not only an act of devotion but also of charity.

The Quran makes this principle clear in one of its verses: “It is not their meat nor their blood, that reaches Allah: it is your piety that reaches Him: He has thus made them subject to you, that ye may glorify Allah for His Guidance to you and proclaim the good news to all who do right (Quran, 22:37).

As per the Quran, Islam is a revival of the earlier Abrahamic faiths that Muslims believe became corrupted over time. The festival of Eid al-Adha is part of this revival. For those who have the means, Islam treats sacrifice as a recommended but not obligatory act. Even in the hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage, this sacrificial rite is not an obligatory nusuk, the Arabic word for ritual. Cattle sacrifice is a nusuk that is performed as a surcharge when pilgrims combine hajj and umrah, the minor pilgrimage to Mecca.

Few realize that the rite of cattle sacrifice is not essential to Islam. What is essential is the ethic of sacrifice. There is hardly a verse in the Quran where the word for prayer, salah, is not conjoined with zakah (alms) or infaq (spending on the needy). This striking frequency with which these two words are mentioned has an important implication. If Muslims were to heed the call for zakah and infaq in a practical sense, the redistribution of wealth would be continuous and there would be no poverty in society.

The idea of sacrifice rests on the notion that human beings should be capable of parting with something deeply precious to them. Abraham was willing to part with his son. When Islam came into being, cattle were almost like family. Historically, nomadic cultures from Mongolia to Tanzania relied completely on animals who formed the very basis of life. In these cultures, animals often shared the same homesteads with families. When people were sacrificing cattle, they were almost parting with a part of one’s own self.

Furthermore, food was scarce in an earlier era. Hunger and poverty were rife. Protein was inadequate except for the ruling classes. So, cattle sacrifice provided people with protein-rich food and was an essential part of festivals. Sacrifice of some form or another has also been a feature of other religions. In the US, the tradition is to carve a turkey on Thanksgiving.

In the modern context, sacrificing cattle or turkeys is not quite the same as in times past. Cattle are now relatively cheap. Sacrificing them is almost a cop-out. People today need food, medicines and books more than one fine meat-rich meal. To qualify for qurbani (nearness to God), zakah (purification and growth of soul), sadaqa (truthfulness and sincerity with charitable acts) and infaq (disbursing the bounty of God), Muslims must sacrifice something of value today.

A Modern Interpretation of Sacrifice

The original meaning of cattle is property. In my native state of Bihar in northern India, it is still called maal, which literally translates to property. Yet even in places like Bihar, cattle are not as valuable as before. Nutrition has improved in South Asia compared to even 10 years ago. Poverty can still be grim, but it does not necessarily mean going to bed on an empty stomach even if the diet itself might be poor.

Traditionally, qurbani involves sharing. A third of the meat goes to the offeror’s household, another third to friends and family, and the final third to the poor. Yet now, fewer South Asians depend on cattle for their livelihood or need it for their diet. Getting some meat on a festival does little to change their wellbeing.

Sacrificing cattle on Eid al-Adha today is observing the letter of the law while violating its spirit. Baqreed is about sacrificing something valuable and sharing it with people to make a difference to their lives. Therefore, we must answer an important question: What is valuable to qualify for qurbani?

In today’s times, the best qurbani would not be sacrificing cattle but rather something else. Could it be one’s savings that could be shared with the poor who are suffering the most due to the coronavirus-induced economic meltdown? Could it be a spare laptop that could be shared with a needy student who has to write a dissertation? Could it be forgiving debts or giving land to those who need it?

There is another ethical and philosophical question involved. Should life be sacrificed in the name of God? Human beings do not develop canine teeth like lions or wolves. Neither do we have short intestinal systems like them. Human beings only started eating meat after discovering fire. The heat softened up meat, making it not only edible but also delicious. Our species could survive and our planet would thrive if we could wean ourselves off meat.

Some religions such as Jainism hold all life to be sacred. Even in Islam, killing an animal to eat it is no ordinary matter. It requires a special dispensation from God. That is why Muslims invoke the name of Allah at the time of slaughter, which in turn is prescribed in some detail and the meat that results from this process is called halal (permissible). Yet meat-eating is not an essential feature of Islam and neither is cattle sacrifice.

Muslims envisage God as merciful and compassionate. In fact, the philosopher Karl Jaspers pointed out how compassion became a central tenet of religious ethics between the 8th to the 3rd century BCE. In this period, new ways of thinking appeared around the world from India and China in the east, Persia in the Near East and the Greco-Roman world in the West. Jaspers termed this period the Achsenzeit or the Axial Age. It changed religion and philosophy forever.

In India, this was the time when the Vedic sacrificial cult came under attack. Heterodox philosophies like Jainism and Buddhism caught fire. They brought in a new culture of peace, non-violence and compassion. Now called the Sramanic traditions, they challenged the hegemony of the Brahminical faith. The Brahmin tradition was only able to mount a comeback by renouncing its sacrificial cult and embracing ahimsa, a doctrine of non-violence that included vegetarianism as an essential tenet. Out went the killing of animals, in came the worship at the temple with which modern Hindus are intimately familiar.

We are living in another transformative age. The ideas of vegetarianism and veganism are gaining ground around the world. Most Muslims have largely ignored these ideas. However, if Islam is to remain relevant, it will have to undertake a reformulation. At a time when people are turning against animal cruelty and taking lives, a sacrificial cult that kills cattle by the millions does appear anachronistic and far from modern.

In the past, religions evolved from human to cattle sacrifice. Should they not evolve again to another form of sacrifice? After all, God tells us, “It is not their meat nor their blood, that reaches Allah: it is your piety that reaches Him” (Quran 22:37).

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Canada prides itself as being a multicultural nation that embraces diversity, yet anti-Muslim sentiments still remain a growing concern. Muslim Canadians continue to be the target of right-wing political ideas that ignite anxieties around Muslim expressions of identity. An  published in May suggests that discrimination against Muslims has become more acceptable in Canada.

The media’s superficial portrayal of Islam perpetuates a dreary picture of Muslims. Events such as the Quebec City Mosque shooting in 2017 that claimed the lives of six Muslims and the passing of  in June 2019, which bans the wearing of religious symbols, have contributed to the growing anti-Muslim rhetoric across Canada. In all these acts, there is a common threat: a rejection of difference propelled by fear, founded in misconceptions and misinformation.

In the face of rising sociopolitical polarizations and inequity among minority races and classes, conversations surrounding diversity, inclusion and equity have become more pertinent than ever. There is a necessity for politicians, policymakers, community leaders (secular and religious) and citizens to conscientiously reflect and come together. Finding more sustainable and equitable strategies to combat dichotomies that divide and disenfranchise must become a priority in the current climate.

Aga Khan IV

One person who has committed his life’s work to cultural engagement and dispelling stereotypes about Muslims is His Highness Aga Khan IV, the 49th hereditary spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslim community. Inspired by Islam, Aga Khan IV is a world leader who addresses a myriad of contemporary issues facing humanity while championing the cause of . Through his efforts, Aga Khan IV offers a powerful antidote to the perpetuating orientalist perceptions that reduce Islam to intolerance and violence.

Many in the developing world are familiar with him through his development initiatives and services offered through the Aga Khan Development Network. As the founder of this network and as a Muslim religious leader, Aga Khan IV puts faith into action through a commitment to engagement and service to humankind.

In fact, Aga Khan IV’s engagement with human development and socioeconomic uplift supersedes any political affiliation. So much so that Andrew Scheer, the current leader of the Canadian Conservative Party, Aga Khan IV as “a clear beacon and an example to follow … changing the world and making it a better place for those who are most in need of our assistance” during an address to the joint houses of Parliament in 2014. An interesting characterization by the Conservative leader who, along with his party members, have engaged in  Aga Khan IV’s stellar reputation for political gain.

Aga Khan IV has spoken widely about the value of embracing a cosmopolitan ethic — an orientation of sorts that enables dialogue and partnerships among different peoples in order to advance the quality of life of every person. This outlook has been passed down from the Greeks to Muslims and, more recently, appropriated by leaders and .

According to Aga Khan IV, such a worldview rests on a deep spiritual foundation. Faith and the world are intricately linked, allowing for an approach that integrates religio-cultural values with socioeconomic commitments. This formulation also facilitates the engagement of the Ismaili Muslim community in the contemporary world. This cosmopolitan ethic envisions a type of human connectedness that aims to weave together the universal and the particular, as well as the spiritual and the material. Aga Khan IV has previously : “A cosmopolitan ethic accepts our ultimate moral responsibility to the whole of humanity, rather than absolutizing a presumably exceptional part … [it] will honor both our common humanity and our distinctive identities — each reinforcing the other as part of the same high moral calling.”

For Aga Khan IV, this cosmopolitan ethic is rooted in the rich ethico-religious tradition of Islam inspired by the Quran, which encourages the believer to embrace a common origin of humanity while acknowledging and respecting its diversity — a gift of the divine. The Quran says, “We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes so that you may know one another” (49:13). In other words, knowing the other is a fulfillment of the divine will, of being Muslim and, indeed, of being human.

Aga Khan IV has chosen the medium of architecture to express the cosmopolitan spirit and brings different perspectives into dialogue. Speaking on September 13 at the Aga Khan Award for Architecture ceremony in Kazan, Russia, he once again emphasized the effective role architecture can have in paving this effort. He , “I believe deeply in the potential of the architectural world to help inspire and enrich a creative dialogue in all four of the areas I have mentioned: a dialogue between creative architectural partners, a dialogue between past and future, a dialogue between natural reality and human creativity, and a dialogue among diverse cultures.”

The layers of engagement and interchange of diverse commitments embedded in these areas of dialogue reflect those values sacred to a cosmopolitan ethic. There are two remarkable buildings in Canada commissioned by Aga Khan IV that play an important role in demystifying the faith of Islam and changing perceptions about Muslims: the Aga Khan Museum and the Ismaili Centre Toronto. These institutional landmarks that sit on a 6.8-hectare site along the arterial Don Valley express Aga Khan IV’s commitment to a cosmopolitan ethic.

Although the Aga Khan Museum is a public institution accomplishing this task through its educational and cultural mission, I want to highlight the equally impressive Ismaili Centre that has added stimulating avenues toward shaping this cosmopolitan outlook.

Cosmopolitan Ethics and the Built Environment

The Ismaili Centre Toronto is the second ambassadorial building of its kind in Canada and the sixth among a family of Ismaili across the globe. These buildings have become a symbol of the Ismaili community’s approach to the Muslim faith and modern life on the world stage. The building’s facade is very much in keeping with the cosmopolitan ethic of expressing a long tradition of Islamic values while reflecting the fabric of the community in which it resides.

Serving as a site of congregation for the community, the Ismaili Centre also fulfills a more ambitious role of advancing opportunities for dialogue and engagement with the broader community. Over the past five years, it has played host to a number of workshops, seminars, round-table dialogues, Nawruz celebrations and the inaugural iftar dinner during Ramadan. In addition, it partakes in the annual “Doors Open Toronto,” welcoming Torontonians and offering an insider’s perspective on Muslim representation — helping to change the narrative, one human at a time.

The center’s impressive social hall is no stranger to entertaining sounds and enriching dialogue. It provides a safe venue for raising complex questions and encouraging mutual exchange and understanding. Collaboration is a key ingredient to the success of the Ismaili Centre’s programming. 

In May, for example, the Women’s Portfolio for the Ismaili Council of Ontario, the Canadian Council of Muslim Women (Toronto chapter), and the Muslim Awards for Excellence came together to host a panel discussion. Four remarkable women, including MP Iqra Khalid, spoke about the valuable contribution of women to Canadian society.

This is just one of the many thoughtful and engaging activities that take place within the center. Another intellectually-engaging series taking place at the Ismaili Centre Toronto is a Conversation Series that broaches a number of curated topics, ranging from bioethics to art. In this way, the Ismaili Centre and its initiatives live up to the ambitious role of representing the values of a Muslim community, productively engaging with civic life and building bridges between diverse communities. This is indeed a testament to Aga Khan IV’s cosmopolitan ethos.

The Ismaili Centre, situated in the vibrant and diverse city of Toronto, sends a bold message to Canada and the world at a time of heightened Islamophobia.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Islamophobia can be seen in a variety of ways. As a form of intolerance and discrimination, it risks affecting relations between Muslims and non-Muslims and undermining social cohesion.

In 2018, the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims by devising the first working definition of Islamophobia in the UK. The group noted in its report that “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”

Tell MAMA, an organization that tracks anti-Muslim incidents in Britain, a total of 685 racially-aggravated incidents between January and June 2018. The report found that 58% of victims were women. Hate crimes in the UK dramatically after the at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. In the week after the shooting, anti-Muslim incidents across Britain increased by 593%.

In the US, studies have been carried out regarding the perception of Muslim Americans. A 2018 survey by New America that one-in-three people “would be concerned if a mosque or Islamic center was built in their neighborhood.” It also revealed that more than half of non-Muslim Americans are worried about the rise of extremism within Muslim communities in the United States.

Manifestations of Islamophobia include verbal threats, physical attacks on people and properties, and the demonization of Muslims in the media. In December 2018, the European Commission a high-level conference on tackling intolerance and discrimination against Muslims in the EU. The commission also appointed a new coordinator on combating anti-Muslim hatred in July 2018. The need for taking action against Islamophobia was underlined by “persistent intolerance and racism against Muslims in the EU, as well as to structural forms of discrimination,” including in access to employment and education for people with a Muslim background.

In this edition of , 51�Թ� talks to Peter Riddell, vice-principal at the Melbourne School of Theology, about Islamophobia in the West.

The interview was conducted at the end of 2018 via a written transcript, which has been edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: How serious is Islamophobia in the modern world? What are the root causes of growing prejudice and bias against Muslims in the West?

Peter Riddell: Any discussion about prejudice should aim to reduce or, ideally, eliminate it. In that context, prejudice by one community toward another needs also to take account of similar prejudice in the opposite direction. So to discuss Islamophobia, namely prejudice against Muslims in the West, without also considering “,” or prejudice against Westerners by Muslims, is like looking at a painting and deliberately covering one eye.

There are many causes of mutual prejudice between Muslims and Westerners. History is a factor. Simply put, wars between Christian Europeans and Muslims have taken place on and off since the seventh century and have left a legacy of painful memories and mutual distrust. And both parties need to repent in this regard. It’s disingenuous to lament Crusader actions at Jerusalem in 1099 without also lamenting Ottoman actions at Constantinople in 1453.

As for the modern world today, I am not convinced that prejudice and bias against Muslims in the West is growing, nor is prejudice and bias against Westerners in Muslim-majority countries necessarily growing. Mass communications and ever-expanding social media may cause some problems, such as focusing on rivalries rather than relationships. But, on a more positive note, they also enable people to see the human face of others who are at a distance, rather than just seeing a negative stereotype. It is far easier today for Westerners to meet Muslims, hear Muslim opinions and share experiences with Muslims — and vice-versa — than it was a generation ago. This is all good for breaking down of stereotypes.

So, personally, I am optimistic that, in spite of continuing mutual prejudices between Westerners and Muslims, the situation is improving as there is more interaction between the two, both in real life and in cyberspace.

Ziabari: Critics of Islam argue that the religion promotes and endorses violence against non-Muslims and is to blame for conflicts across the globe. Is this true? Does Islam encourage violence and aggression?

Riddell: The question assumes that Islam is a monolith. Is there one Islam or are there many Islams? Certainly there is one Quran, and Prophet Muhammad plays a unique role in Islam, but both brought complex messages that are interpreted in different ways by different groups of Muslims.

I notice that radical Islamist groups and more peaceful moderate Islamic groups are both able to quote verses from the Quran and examples from the life of Muhammad in support of their policies and practices. As a non-Muslim, I would not presume to reject the Islamic credentials of any of these groups. What I see is that while some Muslims pursue violence and aggression, more Muslims do not. Who are the true Muslims? That’s not for me to say — that’s for Muslims to resolve.

So, non-Muslim Westerners are left in a quandary, because they are presented with conflicting messages and actions by different groups, all who claim to be basing themselves on the same Quran and following the same prophet.

Ziabari: The pundits and scholars who criticize Islam often fail to reprimand ultra-nationalists and far-right extremists for encouraging a narrative of hatred against immigrants and Muslims. Doesn’t their silence on the growth of xenophobic and racist rhetoric sound duplicitous?

Riddell: There is widespread criticism of “ultra-nationalists and far-right extremists” in Western political and social discourse in both mainstream and social media. Consider responses to the Charlottesville rally of August 2017. It was widely condemned by commentators from all political sectors. Any of the main Western media outlets include acknowledgements of the challenge posed by far-right groups.

But the question asks about “the pundits and scholars who criticize Islam.” This needs further clarification. Who does this refer to? A conservative group such as the Middle East Forum is sometimes critical of groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, but at the same time was highly critical of the Charlottesville rally.

It is important in such discussions not to use caricatures of particular groups as if clear lines of division exist. In fact, both Muslim and non-Muslim communities are more like a continuum, with attitudes blurring between sub-groups. This is where stereotypes are unhelpful, as they tend to ignore the complexity that lies in the positions that different groups take.

Ziabari: Do you think leaders of Islam and Christianity are prepared to shape a discourse around how to bridge gaps that keep Muslims and Christians away from each other and stimulate inter-faith dialogue?

Riddell: There is a huge amount of effort being put into interfaith dialogue these days. This has been particularly noticeable since the 9/11 attacks, so we need to recognize and give credit to those Christian and Muslim leaders who have been trying to build bridges between the communities in order to ensure that past conflicts are replaced by future cooperation. Of course, more can always be done, and faith leaders are always trying to explore new ways of bridge-building. But let us give credit to dialogue initiatives that have proliferated in recent years, such as the Building Bridges seminar; the various activities under the Common Word initiative; specific interactions between, for example, the pope and the grand imam of Al-Azhar; interactions between Christian groups and Shia authorities from Iran; and countless other initiatives.

The media have an important role to play in bridge-building between Christians and Muslims, and the Western and Muslim worlds. It is important that media reports contribute to positive bridge-building rather than exacerbating differences. This goes back to the question of negative stereotyping and perpetuating of prejudicial views. Prejudice is transmitted in many ways, including by mass media. Both Western media and Muslim media have played a role in stoking the files of prejudice. Responsible media reporting will help, rather than hinder, improve relations between Western and Muslim countries.

Ziabari: Is Islamophobia taken seriously by governments in the West as a threat to multiculturalism that needs to be countered?��

Riddell: Ironically, Islamophobia among Westerners is taken far more seriously by governments in the West than Westophobia among Muslims. For example, in 1997 the British government commissioned an important by the Runnymede Trust on Islamophobia in British mainstream media. It provided solid evidence of Islamophobic attitudes and comment in the media, but failed to note clear Westophobic commentary in British Muslim media. The same body issued a 20th anniversary on Islamophobia in late 2017, which pointed to ongoing anti-Muslim prejudice, but again failed to subject Muslim media to the same kind of scrutiny as Western media, in order to determine whether negative stereotyping was bi-directional, which it clearly is.

Over the past 20 years, I have lived in both Britain and Australia and noticed that discussions about Islamophobia are frequent and take place at the highest levels. In Britain, the recent entitled, “The Missing Muslims: Unlocking British Muslim Potential for the Benefit of All” is being considered by the British government as the basis of new policies to address Islamophobia. But there is a deafening silence in Western political contexts about toxic anti-Western comment in Muslim media outlets. Moreover, I see little evidence that majority Muslim governments are willing to address such anti-Western prejudice in much Muslim media in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Ziabari: Do you agree that anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric of US President Donald Trump has caused great damage to Muslims worldwide and stoked fear of Islam as a religion more than before?

Riddell: We need to be precise in what we are referring to here. The Trump administration’s Executive Order 13780 imposes bans on various kinds of travel to the US for citizens of Libya, Yemen, Iran, Somalia, Syria, North Korea and on some government officials of Venezuela. Most, but not all, of these countries have Muslim majorities.

The problem with the kind of rhetoric and bans that have been issued by the Trump administration is that decent, law-abiding Muslims from the specified countries are caught up in legislation designed to target Islamist radicals. This creates and reinforces stereotypes on both sides: among some Americans who think that all Muslims are the same, and among some Muslims who think all Americans are the same.

It is important to note that there is significant opposition to these Trump administration policies within the US, both from individual state authorities and from nongovernment groups. These opposition groups gain significant leverage within the US media, ensuring that the debate around Muslim issues in the US is far from monolithic.

Ziabari: What do you think law-abiding Muslims living in the West should do in order to be immune to the repercussions of anti-Muslim prejudice that permeates these societies and has set about to grow under the shadow of far-right extremism, Brexit, Trump and the 9/11 attacks before them?

Riddell: There are big assertions built into the question. I do not agree that “anti-Muslim prejudice permeates Western societies,” nor do I agree that lslamophobia is a growing phenomenon, given the significant steps taken by Western governments, church leaders and many social groups to show the human face of Muslim minorities living in the West.

But the heart of the question is about what law-abiding, committed Muslims living in the West should do. Such Muslims should continue to do a number of good things that they are already doing.

First, they should continue to engage with the non-Muslim society around them in efforts of friendship, showing interest in the cultural and religious heritage of those non-Muslim communities. Second, such Muslims should seek at all times to distance themselves from the actions of radical Islamist groups, rather than remaining silent. If there is a terrorist attack in a Western location — and there will be more — law-abiding Muslims should demonstrate against these attacks with statements of “not in my name.” Moreover, they should also report to security authorities if they hear of any subversive activity that is planned.

What law-abiding Muslims could do more of is to ensure that the media outlets within their own communities do not include messages of hostility and prejudice toward the Western societies that they have adopted and that have embraced them.

Ziabari: Reports about Islamophobic hate crimes in Europe, North America and Australia make the news headlines frequently these days. Are law enforcement authorities lenient on the perpetrators? Has it become an accepted convention for hijab-wearing women to be assaulted or Arabic-speaking men to be attacked in public?

Riddell: Here we are again talking about prejudice between communities, and so we need to consider both cases where Muslims are victims and also cases where Muslims are perpetrators.

After a terrorist incident in Sydney, Australia, in 2014 carried out by Mohammed Hassan Manteghi Borujerdi, an Iranian refugee to Australia, some Muslims feared an lslamophobic backlash, and there was verbal abuse against some Muslims by some non-Muslim Australians. However, it has certainly not become an “accepted convention” for Muslim women or men to be abused in public in Australia or any other Western country for showing outward symbols of identity. For example, note the compassionate response by many Australians to the Sydney 2014 incident in the form of the “I’ll ride with you” campaign, when non-Muslim people offered to accompany Muslims on daily travel as a public statement of solidarity and friendship.

From the other perspective, there are frequent reports of discrimination and at times persecution of Christian minorities in Muslim-majority countries, with churches attacked and Christian individuals threatened. In such circumstances, it is always heartening for these Christians to see cases where Muslims protect churches and offer support, such has occurred in Egypt, Indonesia and other locations.

As for whether the law enforcement authorities in these countries are lenient on perpetrators of anti-Muslim or anti-Christian verbal or physical abuse, generally I believe that these authorities do what they can to punish offenders within the limits of the law. But more needs to be done and legislation needs to be constantly reviewed to ensure that it is keeping up with community realities.

Ziabari: What role can Muslim intellectuals, scholars and public figures play in breaking stereotypes about their faith and resisting dehumanization by the media and right-wing politicians?

Riddell: Realistically, there will always be stereotypes, so it is more a matter of reducing them rather than breaking them. Stereotypes derive from a number of factors, including ignorance but also including media misrepresentations. So, I think Muslim intellectuals, scholars and public figures should continue the good work they are doing at present in seeking to inform Western populations about the faith of Islam and the diversity of Muslim people. Muslim media outlets are playing a role in this regard, and considerable resources have been put into Islamic TV channels and print media in the West.

But I always find it far more powerful when spokespeople for one community advocate on behalf of another community. Both Westerners and Muslims should consciously ask how their own communities have contributed to problems, rather than always pointing fingers at the other community. Westerners, including Christians, should advocate for fair representation of Muslims in the West, and Muslims should advocate for Christians in the Muslim world and seek to overcome negative stereotypes of the West in Muslim media.

We all have a role play here. Even this present interview needs to ensure that it is contributing to better relations between the West and Islam, rather than exacerbating age-old tensions. If we feed historic suspicions between Westerners and Muslims of each other, we must share the responsibility for bad outcomes.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is Islamophobia on the Rise? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Nowruz is the ancient Iranian celebration of the new year. Although it is difficult to say with certainty when it was first marked, there are some accounts that suggest Nowruz may be��. Literally meaning “new day” in Persian, Nowruz is shared by several countries in West and Central Asia, Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, as well as the Iranian diaspora across the world. At the initiative of several countries celebrating this occasion, 21 March was declared�� by the United Nations in 2010, and since then the the Persian New Year has been marked at the organization’s headquarters in New York.

In 2009, Nowruz was inscribed on the ’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and, according to the UN, “promotes values of peace and solidarity between generations and within families.”

Preparations for Nowruz begin several weeks before the commencement of the new year. Families join forces to clean their houses, and almost all the family members help out during a process called ��—��house-shaking — during which carpets, windows, curtains and furniture are thoroughly cleaned, broken items and utensils replaced, and homes decorated with flowers. Iranian households are used to extensive shopping sprees in anticipation of Nowruz when new clothes and home appliances, as well as gifts for relatives and friends, are purchased.

Nowruz celebrations start on the day of vernal equinox and normally last 13 days, ending on the 13th day of the solar calendar, popularly known as . On this Nature’s Day��Iranian families spend time picnicking outdoors, share candies, sweetmeat and special meals, and release the sprouting greenery collected for the into rivers, hoping that it will take away bad omens and fulfill their wishes for the coming year.

Nowruz is a festival of delicious meals, adeptly homemade cookies and confectionary, popular family reunions and philanthropy. It is a secular celebration and as a result has been loathed by religious hardliners in Iran. However, efforts to undermine the importance of Nowruz have mostly ended in vain, proving that it is impossible to eliminate the tradition from Iranian cultural practices.

In this edition of The Interview, 51�Թ� talks to Afshin Marashi, a noted Iran expert and professor in modern Iranian history at the University of Oklahoma, about the importance of Nowruz, its historical roots and its role in connecting the nations that celebrate it.

Kourosh Ziabari: From a historical perspective, is it possible to determine when Nowruz was celebrated for the first time and where? Is Ferdowsi’s epic poem��Shahnameh an appropriate source to trace the roots of Nowruz?��

Afshin Marashi: It is unlikely that we can pinpoint an exact historical origin for the Nowruz celebration. However, we do have abundant historical evidence to suggest that it has a long history that stretches back to the earliest era of Iran’s pre-Islamic history and Zoroastrian religious heritage.

The term Nowruz literally means “new day” and became part of the ritual life of the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian religious tradition marking the vernal equinox, or the first day of the spring season. Within the Zoroastrian tradition, the association of Nowruz with the coming of spring reinforced key Zoroastrian religious teachings of light and goodness triumphing over the forces of darkness and evil. The seasonal shift from winter to spring reflected this Zoroastrian religious imagination, and Nowruz became the part of the ritual life of Iranians marking this annual transition. So the early history of Nowruz was intimately tied to a Zoroastrian religious cosmology.

And yet, despite this long and tumultuous history, the culture of Iran has managed to maintain certain essential elements. Perhaps the most important among these elements is the core belief in nature and history’s continuing cycle of birth and rebirth, of invention and reinvention, of an eternal cycle of renaissance and regeneration.

Some scholars argue that Nowruz was celebrated as far back as three millennia ago, but we can be certain that it was celebrated as early as between 500 and 100 BC in the imperial city of Persepolis in the Apadana palace complex. There is evidence for this in both the textual and archaeological sources.

There is also a literary and mythological tradition that tells the story of the origins of Nowruz. This tradition comes down to us most evocatively through an epic poem written in the early Islamic period around 1000 AD — the��Shahnameh,��or the Book of Kings, composed in the New Persian language by the poet Ferdowsi. In this mythological telling of the origins of Nowruz, it was the mythical king Jamshid who originated what became the Nowruz tradition. According to this legend, Jamshid was victorious in a terrible war against demonic forces.

This conflict brought about great destruction in the world. After Jamshid’s victory, a new era of rebirth and rebuilding commenced, and the Nowruz celebration became a way of remembering the great deeds of Jamshid. Ferdowsi’s��Shahnameh��has both mythological and historical elements, and��the Jamshid legend comes from one of the earliest and most mythological parts of the��Shahnameh��narrative.

Ziabari: In 2010, United Nations designated 21 March as the International Nowruz Day. What’s the significance of this proclamation?��

Marashi: The 2010 UN proclamation is very important because it affirms that Nowruz is important for the entire world. With the UN proclamation, March 21 will always be recognized as International Day of Nowruz. Prior to the proclamation, Nowruz was not always known by the public. It was a holiday that had a more limited and niche relevance among Iranians inside Iran and among the diaspora. The UN proclamation has turned Nowruz into a global event, and has worked to raise international awareness for the celebration. Today, it has become increasingly commonplace to hear non-Iranians say “Happy Nowruz” on March 21 as an affirmation of the beginning of the spring season. This newfound awareness of Nowruz is in large part due to the UN proclamation. It also suggests how essential elements of Iran’s cultural heritage can be in harmony with global and universal cultural values.

Ziabari: In the aftermath of Iran’s 1979 revolution, religious zealots made many efforts to downplay the significance of Nowruz and challenge its popularity as a festivity that is rooted in Iran’s ancient culture and civilization, claiming that it’s not consistent with Islam and its values. Do you think they’ve been successful? Is Nowruz at odds with Islam?��

Marashi: It is true that in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 revolution, Iran’s revolutionary Islamic movement sought to eradicate or minimize expressions of pre-Islamic Iranian culture, including the Nowruz celebrations. The controversies over Nowruz following the revolution suggest how much culture and politics were and remain interconnected inside Iran. Prior to 1979, the official culture of the Pahlavi monarchy had celebrated Iran’s pre-Islamic cultural heritage as the basis of an official Iranian national identity. With the overthrow of the monarchy, this cultural basis of Iranian nationalism was contested.

The so-called cultural revolution, as Iran’s Islamic leaders proclaimed, included reimposing many aspects of Islamic orthodoxy as a way of purifying the culture from Pahlavi-era cultural policies that were often associated with idolatry. Mandatory veiling of women is one example of these cultural practices that was now reimposed; initial restrictions on music were another, [as were the] threats to Iranian archaeological sites.

We’ve seen similar examples of cultural politics in other more recent cases of Islamic activism, such as the destruction of pre-Islamic archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq by ISIS between 2014 and 2015, as well as looting and vandalism of archaeological museums and libraries in Baghdad and Mosul. The destruction of the monumental Buddhist statues in Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2001 is another stark example of how culture and politics have intersected in recent examples of Islamist activism.

The threats to Iran’s pre-Islamic cultural heritage following the 1979 revolution were part of this larger pattern and in some ways represented the first of these large-scale attacks on the culture of secular nationalism that had been promoted for much of the 20^th century. In the case of Iran, however, the attack on expressions of pre-Islamic culture have diminished since the initial days of the revolution. Nowruz is today part of the annual celebrations. The leadership of the Islamic Republic is aware of how engrained the Nowruz celebration is among Iranians, and they have tried to co-opt and appropriate elements of Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage into the official culture of the Islamic Republic.

Nevertheless, expressions of pre-Islamic Iranian culture often become the basis of political challenges to the Islamic Republic. Cyrus the Great Day on October 28 has become an unofficial annual day of protest inside Iran, where thousands of Iranians have gathered at the archaeological site of the tomb of Cyrus as an expression of protest against the Islamic Republic. In 2009, during the Green Movement in Iran, thousands of protesters also gathered around the statue of Ferdowsi and invoked the name of the poet as part of a language of protest. It would not be hard to imagine how the language, symbolism and imagery of Nowruz might be used in the future as part of a movement of resistance to the current government and as an invocation for a call of “rebirth” of Iranian culture and politics.

Ziabari: Nowruz is celebrated in several countries by some 300 million people. How does Nowruz promote solidarity and friendship between nations that mark this occasion?��

Marashi: Nowruz is indeed a holiday that is celebrated around the world, not only inside Iran, but in many other countries that have a history of Iranian and Persian cultural influence. These countries extend far beyond a region that one might imagine, including not only the Middle East, but also countries in Central Asia, South Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans. In India, in particular, Nowruz has a special place as part of the culture of India’s Zoroastrian or Parsi communities. The Parsis in today’s India are the descendants of the original migrants of Zoroastrians who left Iran following the Arab-Muslim conquest of Iran in the seventh century. When they arrived in India, they brought with them much of the cultural heritage of Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage, including the Nowruz tradition.

The Parsis of India can be seen as the original Iranian diaspora community. There are other more recent Iranian diaspora communities throughout the world, most of whom emigrated from Iran following the revolution. These diaspora communities, like their Parsi predecessors, have also brought the celebration of Nowruz with them to the new parts of the world where they have settled. Today one is just as likely to find Iranian Nowruz celebrations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London and Paris as one might in Tehran, Mumbai and Dushanbe.

Ziabari: Nowruz has been a source of inspiration for many artists to create works of art revolving around the themes of renewal, birth, spring and the new year. What is about Nowruz that motivates so many artists?��

Marashi: Iran has an extremely rich artistic tradition. The Nowruz celebrations have been an important source of inspiration for this distinctly Iranian aesthetic sensibility. The universal themes of renewal and rebirth that are so integral to the Nowruz celebrations provide artists with a broad range of symbols and emotions to draw from. Those who are familiar with the symbolic vocabulary of Nowruz can readily identify how artists make use of this vocabulary to express certain ideas. The deeply ingrained elements of the culture of Nowruz provides artists — whether visual, literary, musical or otherwise — with a readily available palate of aesthetic material to draw from. This is perhaps what makes Nowruz so ubiquitous in expressions of Iranian and Persianate art.

Ziabari: The Persian New Year falls on the first day of spring and Nowruz kicks off with the vernal equinox. What does this connection tell us about the precision of Persian solar calendar?��

Marashi: The calendar systems that Iranians have used over the millennia have gone through many iterations and revisions. Clearly Iranians had a deep interest, born of necessity, in calculating seasonal time. This necessity had its origins in cultural changes stemming from the Neolithic concern for agriculture and in Zoroastrian religious ideas, both of which are very much interconnected. Over time, the commencement of spring became linked to the Iranian solar calendar system, with the first day of the first month of the Zoroastrian calendar, the month of Farvardin becoming designated as New Year’s Day or Nowruz.

Calculating this precise day became a major preoccupation for Iranian astronomers, mathematicians, philosophers and even poets. Abu Reyhan Biruni, the 10^th-century Iranian polymath, was among those who sought to calculate a fixed moment for the advent of Nowruz. The 11^th-century Persian poet Omar Khayyam, although most often remembered for his lyrical quatrains, was also an astronomer and mathematician, and his precise calendar calculations are the basis of the Iranian solar calendar known as the Jalali calendar that is still in use in Iran today. This calendar is so exact that the precise moment of the vernal equinox is calculated so that the Nowruz celebration can take place in all parts of the world as a simultaneous event.

Ziabari: How close are the modern manifestations of Nowruz and the way it’s celebrated today to its original shape and form? Was the haft seen table historically set up the way it’s prepared today?��

Marashi: The haft��seen component of Nowruz has become a very important element of the New Year celebration. The term haft seen, literally seven “seens,” refers to seven items that begin with the Persian letter seen. Each of these items has a symbolic meaning and is placed on a decorative table during the weeks of the Nowruz season. The items include��sabzeh (wheat for rebirth), samanu (sweet pudding for wealth), senjed (fruit for love), serkeh (vinegar for age), seeb (apple for beauty), sir (garlic for medicine) and sumaq (sumac spice).

Other items such as goldfish, coins, hyacinth flowers and mirrors have also become commonplace as part of the haft seen table. While the use of these items on the haft seen table has become a ubiquitous part of the Nowruz celebrations, there is little evidence to suggest that his tradition has a long history. Scattered references to these symbols are occasionally found in the available source material, but it is only since the 19^th century that the haft seen table as we know it today has become a more formal component of the Nowruz celebrations. This suggests that while the Nowruz tradition has a long history, it has also evolved and gone through multiple stages. The haft seen table that we know today is therefore only the most modern iteration of a much older tradition.

Ziabari: According to some accounts of Nowruz, this festival has been celebrated for some 3,000 years. How has Nowruz survived the passage of time over the past centuries?��

Marashi: Iranian culture is not a fixed or immutable tradition that has remained stagnant and rigid throughout its history. One of the perennial features of Iran’s cultural history is, in fact, its ability to reinvent itself over the span of its many centuries. Throughout this long span of history, Iranian culture, in all its complexity and diversity, has been ruled by innumerable dynasties, conquered by multiple invading armies, has changed its religion and its language, and has experienced disintegration and dispersal.

And yet, despite this long and tumultuous history, the culture of Iran has managed to maintain certain essential elements. Perhaps the most important among these elements is the core belief in nature and history’s continuing cycle of birth and rebirth, of invention and reinvention, of an eternal cycle of renaissance and regeneration. This simple idea is what has allowed Iranian culture to persevere throughout the many stages of its difficult history. It is also this simple idea that represents the essential meaning of Nowruz.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Nowruz: Celebrating History’s Cycle of Birth and Rebirth appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Egged on by the media and abetted by and and the , the world stumbles toward an increasingly confused and confusing “clash of civilizations.” Shortly after President George H.W. Bush’s proclaimed a “new world order,” Samuel Huntington famously published a book with the title The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996). In it he predicted an imminent and possibly decisive clash between two existing “civilizations”: the West and Islam. In 2001, that clash became a military reality that has been festering inconclusively ever since.

Generations of Europeans (and especially Austrians) have viewed the as a , the moment when the West pushed back the Muslim invaders, securing Europe for (Christian) Europeans alone. This simplistic idea has not only persisted in people’s minds, but feeds the current trend toward populism in Europe, including the idea that Europeans must protect the integrity of their culture by rejecting Muslim immigration.

History is of course more complicated than the version taught in middle school and spread by the media. In a recent article in Aeon, Norwegian historian on who was clashing (and collaborating) with whom at the Battle of Vienna and reveals a few surprises.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Clash of Civilizations:

A fictional construct regularly promoted in history by self-interested political theorists to misrepresent the intentions of vast groups of people, with a view to persuading the population of their nation or region to align behind the tiny group of “managers of history” to which they belong

Contextual note

The Battle of Vienna carries a distinctive symbolism because Europeans perceive Austria and Hungary as their eastern frontier, separating them from both the Muslims and the Slavs. In 1683, Vienna was saved but Budapest remained part of the Ottoman Empire until 1699. It’s in the lands beyond Hungary that things get messy. Not only are there, to this day, Muslim populations in the Balkans but other fault lines appear, such as the division between Western Christianity (Catholic and Protestant) and the Eastern Orthodox tradition dominant in both the Slavic nations and Greece. Then there is the question of Turks vs. Arabs (race and language), complicated once again by the geographical status of Turkey, a powerful modern nation straddling Europe and Asia.

What emerges is a vague impression shared by a lot of people that European unity and European culture can only be about race, Europe being the land in which “true Europeans” are Caucasians (though, ironically, , which is even further east).

When Huntington launched his notion of the clash of civilizations, he was referring to a much larger “West,” led by the United States. In a , Who We Are, America’s Great Debate (2005), Huntington examines the famous “melting pot” of the US and identifies the core culture that he insists must be defended. It is essentially WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). One “Huntington’s ill-conceived, crotchety and … undocumented jeremiad against Latino immigration,” offering Donald Trump his major campaign theme of a decade later.

A reviewer in British newspaper suggested Huntington’s “debate” represents “the self-indulgence of an insecure people.”��And though the most vulnerable people in the US are minorities and especially blacks, the “insecure people” are the whites, who apparently no longer know how to identify their culture other than through a conscious or unconscious attitude of white supremacy, which has now become a Western trend with the rise of populism and nationalism.

Historical note

Europe and the Western world in general have a cultural problem that few politicians accept to address in serious terms. They remain irretrievably confused about how, as nations, they can deal with the idea of . They tend to reduce it to the question of being for or against it, which to a large extent is what was at play in the UK’s Brexit vote.

The irony is that for at least the past 500 hundred years, European nations have cultivated diversity by colonizing much of the globe and claiming control over a wide diversity of peoples. And though they tend to define culture in terms of race, language or religion, the real factor permitting control was something else: rapid technological innovation that took place within a violently competitive political landscape. Before Europeans began colonizing on all five continents, the Chinese had attained the highest level of technical innovation. But not having to compete with other political rivals, the Chinese never deployed the level of hard-nosed aggression that Spain, Portugal, Britain, France and later other European nations practiced across the globe.

In the end we must ask ourselves what we mean by “civilization.” Is it the collective work of all people who participate in building it, from top to bottom or bottom to top? Or is it the set of values imposed by an elite and reflected in its visible institutions?

When asked what he thought of Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi , “I think it would be a good idea.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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For many Muslims worldwide, May 17��marks the first day of Ramadan, the observance of abstaining from food, water and innate desires between sunrise and sunset. Muslims will faithfully observe this third fundamental pillar of Islam as ordained by God.��Though much is made of the physical aspects around Ramadan,��apart from the physical sacrifices and discipline the holy month brings with it, it also represents a spiritual space for remembering and reinforcing relationships.

We are invited to re-examine the relationship with ourselves.��On the spiritual journey that each one of us undertakes, the most difficult lesson is to understand our destination.��We all struggle with the destination, as well as the mode and speed of travel.��However, for those of you who have read��The Alchemist��by Paulo Coelho, the understanding of this destination is very simple: “Go; travel the world, look for the truth and the secret of life — every road will lead you to this sense of initiation: the secret is hidden in the place from which you set out.”

Thus the “secret” and the “destination” are hidden in the very place where you are.��For many of us on this spiritual journey it is about seeking the one, the creator, the meaning of life.��The secret is that what you seek is found only��by rediscovering the essence of your own nature. The essence of your own nature is the return to oneself.

This is the apparent paradox of spiritual experience whereby the constant effort that we make to purify, to control and liberate our hearts is, in the end, a reconciliation with the deepest level of our being.��That spark that the creator breathed into our heart — ��in Arabic — is the spark of humility, the awareness of fragility, the consciousness of limitation, the shoulder of responsibility.

Developing this state is the very essence of Ramadan, something that is often missed in the superficial celebrations of this most blessed month. At the heart of our consumer society, where materialism and individualism drive our daily lives, the blessed month of Ramadan reinforces our personal effort and commitment, invites us toward the deep horizons of introspection and meaning, reminds us of silence, restraint and remembrance, and inculcates the importance of detail, precision, rigor and discipline of practice.

We are invited to re-examine our relationship with the creator.��Fasting is in essence a deeply individual act: No one knows you are fasting except you and the creator, and it is easy to pretend on the outside that you are fasting. Hence its very act is about developing that personal connection with the��creator.��Through acts of worship during the blessed month, we take up a dialogue with God, a dialogue of intimacy, of sincerity, of love. This re-examination allows us to realize that we marry the purpose of our existence with the purpose of our subsistence, while nurturing the inspiration from the Quran that “God will not change anything for the good if you change nothing.”

We are invited to re-examine our relationship with our community.��Ramadan is a feast of faith of fraternal atmosphere that is shared with all brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, over the last years, the concept of a fraternity has been denigrated to a single notion within the mindset of the Muslim community, which has gradually entrenched itself in an ideological box.��This ideological comfort zone is an intellectual arrogance leading to an isolationist mentality and a cultural ghetto, into which Muslim communities around the world, especially those that live under minority situations, voluntarily lock themselves.

This isolationist mentality invites��an “us” versus “them” attitude, meaning that the Muslim community has always been worried about “us” rather than taking an all encompassing “we.”��The sense of community is reinforced with the fact that we all start and finish our fast together, while also choosing to pray together.

We are invited to re-examine our relationship with our society. Ramadan teaches us that we share the burdens of others, especially those less fortunate than us, and we remember our responsibilities toward them.��The giving of charity is encouraged during this period as it is felt that rewards are doubled.��Identifying with others in different ways is important in our role of living in society as founded upon a universal humanitarian principle based on the following verse from the holy Quran: “If anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all mankind.”

A world that makes sense is a world in which we connect with other people, often beyond our immediate communities and experience, and show them compassion and love.��This is the ultimate aspect of building relationships as taught by Ramadan.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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It’s 2017 and Muslim women across the globe are breaking stereotypes. No matter where they are located or what industry they are involved in — sport, fashion or politics — they are getting themselves known and setting a powerful example for Muslim women everywhere.

If you are not aware of them already, now is the time to be inspired by these successful Muslim ladies.

Saufeeya Goodson

Based in Dubai, is known internationally, appearing in many fashion magazines. She is also the co-owner of — previously known as @hijabfashion — which is a popular Instagram fashion page with over 2.9 million followers. If you haven’t already spotted her in or , then she is one to check out. Her outfits are bold and daring, ranging somewhere between contemporary and . Usually spotted wearing her signature sunglasses, she is making fashionable and very much on-trend.

Linda Sarsour

Linda is a Palestinian-American civil rights activist, mostly known for her part in helping to organize the , a protest movement led by women that brought . They all had one common goal and that was to make it very clear that women’s rights are just as important as human ones.

Ruma

Known for her fashion blogs, recently found herself on the Twitter page of H&M, applauded for her very special panache and stylishness. Named Mahmuda but called Ruma by everyone, her dream is to be so much more than just a regular fashionista. Looking to inspire her followers with stories and lessons learned from her life, she uses social media and the art of fashion to stimulate and motivate. Seeing haute hijab as the essence of traditional modesty, she sees what she does as being much more akin to a women’s movement rather than simply a fashion statement.

Halima Aden

Halima is a model known for being the first Somali-American Muslim to take part in a Minnesota USA pageant wearing a hijab and go on to reach the semifinals. To top this, she hit the runway when she modeled for Kanye West at his Yeezy season 5 fashion show. Disposing of all Muslim stereotypes, she also appeared on the , wearing the Nike hijab with a caption saying, “This is American Beauty.”

Shahd Batal

As a YouTuber and vlogger, Shahd’s focus is mainly on providing viewers with her own original tips to attain healthy skin and apply makeup. Sudanese by birth but now living in Minneapolis, her videos have been hitting the internet since 2014 and were recently rehashed and showcased via her new sleek channel. Her focus is on honesty and pure simplicity. Here you will find on how to wear a classic head-wrap and pen the perfect eyebrows, all held together with her very personal stories with regard to the hijab.

Carolyn Walker-Diallo

Carolyn hit the headlines when she was back in 2015, becoming the first New York City Civil Court judge to do so. She bravely stood up to the backlash that resulted and, because of this, she has become an inspirational figure for many Muslim women around the world.

Behnaz Shafiei

Something you may not expect is a Muslim woman road racer/motocross rider, but is exactly that. Born in Iran, she is the sole Iranian female to be involved in road racing professionally. In a country where women are ridiculed for their driving skills, Behnaz loves the fact that many men are scared to do the things she can on her motorbike.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Sharmeen has been named by magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. A Muslim filmmaker, journalist and activist born in Pakistan, much of her work focuses on highlighting the inequalities that many women face. So far she has received two Academy Awards, six Emmys and a Lux Style Award. Even the Pakistani government has honored her, presenting her with the second highest civilian honor of the country, the .

As you can see, there is no shortage of Muslim women to inspire, encourage and motivate. By breaking the mold and showing themselves to be powerful, influential and compelling, they are setting a great example for Muslim women of today.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Since the election of Michel Aoun as president on November 1, a two-year political stalemate in Lebanon has concluded. His marks the culmination of a strategic effort that began over 10 years ago, when out of the rubble of the Syrian withdrawal emerged a pragmatic alliance between Aoun’s nascent Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah. The marriage between the Maronite Aounists and Shia Hezbollah was a shrewd move of political convenience, calculated to circumvent the rise of the Western- and Saudi-backed Saad Hariri and his March 14 Alliance.

But it was also a part of grand Iranian strategy. Aoun’s rise to the presidency is the latest in a series of master chess moves calculated to solidify �������DZ�������’s control over Lebanon and, more broadly, to strengthen Shia Islamist power.

While Hezbollah—the Middle East’s most powerful popular Shia movement—secures hard-won political power through the gaming of the Lebanese political system, its nearest Sunni counterpart, Daesh (Islamic State), is on the cusp of defeat at the hands of Iraqi and Kurdish forces, following several years of incompetent and barbarous millenarian governance in the areas under its control. All the while, policies from Sunni powers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Turkey have fanned the flames of nihilistic takfirism and inter-Sunni ethnic warfare.

Sunni and Shia Islam

It is legitimate to ask how the militant variants of Sunni and Shia Islam have become so divergent.

Although a granular analysis of Islamic hierology would be fascinating (and endless), suffice to say that the codified theological authority of Shiism allows for a more rigid adherence to clerical dictates. A significant effect of this structure has also been a religious leadership that is considerably better educated and qualified than its Sunni counterparts. For example, Osama bin Laden, who was an engineer with to speak of, became a spiritual leader of militant Sunnis. Yet a similarly unqualified figure materializing in Shiism is almost unthinkable. Indeed, while Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has received extensive theological education in both Lebanon and Najaf, on all major questions he has deferred to maraji such as the late Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, as well as to ayatollahs in Iran.

But the application of theological tenants does not occur in a vacuum. Identities—local, tribal, cultural and national—contribute, as does the broad sweep of history.

For the Shias, nothing has contributed more to their modern identity—or to the nature of their militancy—than Iran. Since the time of the Safavids, Iranian Shiism has been the most powerful force guiding the sect. Given Shia hierarchical authority, this has resulted in a “Persianization” of Shiism, with Iranian clerics saturating Shia mosques, as well as the watering down of ethnic divides between Arabs and Persians through marriage and cohabitation, particularly in neighboring Iraq.

Despite theological debates among maraji, with highly influential ayatollahs such as Iraq’s Ali al-Sistani not wholly subscribing to Ruhollah Khomeini’s , the sanctity of the authority has prohibited inter-sectarian conflict of any significant kind. This is in stark contrast to inter-Salafist violence prevalent in Syria and Iraq, or the Salafist targeting of other Sunni sub-sects (Sufis) and theocracies (Saudi Arabia).

Persian Nationalism

A crucial byproduct of Iran’s de facto custody of Shiism has been the cross-pollination of Shiism and Persian nationalism. Iranians are conscious that they are inheritors of a grand history of Persian greatness. Iran’s status as the preeminent purveyor of Shia theological currents (Najaf and Karbala notwithstanding) has rendered its strategic guidance the virtual command authority for the Middle East’s vast Shia communities. With the unitary nature of Iran’s clerical-governmental leadership, the centuries-ingrained Persian chauvinism tends to inflect the strategic expressions of Iranian religious thought. No marja or ayatollah has directly questioned Iran’s religious legitimacy, as Sunni extremist leaders routinely do of Saudi Arabia.

Iranian leadership, although highly religious in nature, is pragmatic, pursuing regional hegemony with Shiism as its vehicle. Nationalism, anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism have come to define Shia fundamentalism, a result of the “red Shiism” of Ali Shariati and the radical left’s influence on Khomeini and other anti-Shah thinkers during the 1960s and 1970s. Iran’s grand strategy, in fact, has more in common with Bolshevism than with Sunni takfirism. From its alliances with the communist (that is to say atheist) Tudeh Party during the Iranian Revolution, to its empowerment of the region’s 30 million Sunni Kurds (which it has been doing since the early 1980s), to �������DZ�������’s alliance with the Christian Aounists, the militant Shia movement has proven to be pragmatic and strategically talented.

The Sunni jihadist movement, conversely, busies itself with internecine conflict (see for but one salient example) and draconian of civilian populations. The Iranian leadership, meanwhile, has formed a kind of Shia Comintern (admittedly, not so clearly organized) comprising allied militant groups across the Muslim world and beyond.

Although Iran is full of many liturgical illogicalities typical of a theocratic administration, when it matters, the Islamic Republic has proven time and time again, as have its prized proxies, that discipline and strategic foresight, not irrational fanaticism, rule the day. One only needs to drive through Hezbollah neighborhoods in Beirut to understand that it is not exactly Daesh-controlled Raqqa.

Quds Force

Iran’s military professionalism illuminates the point. Throughout the Middle East, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force is the only strategic military organization, beside US Army Special Forces, conducting long-term force multiplication among local guerrilla fighters of any significant size and scope. In addition to Quds Force operatives, Iran has even deployed regular army commandos to the fighting, a risky commitment its Sunni state rivals lack. The military alliance of Iran, Russia, the Assad government, Hezbollah and Iraq’s myriad Shia militias has proven strategically decisive in Syria.

The Sunni powers, because of a lack of unity both with each other and with their militant sub-state coreligionists, have no discernable strategy in place in Syria, Iraq or Yemen.

Ultimately, it is the purity—the life-or-death importance of ideological details—that prevents the extended Salafi-Wahhabi-Takfiri community from challenging Shia geostrategy and organization. In many ways, the Shia militant movement is simply Iranian imperial nationalism under the guise of Islam. It is the preeminence of this pursuit of hegemony that has allowed it to compromise the most irrational (if doctrinally accurate) elements of fundamentalism—namely, inter-religious alliances with Sunnis, Christians and, covertly at least, Jews. This is because Shia fundamentalism is based primarily on the idea of resistance, not extreme literal adherence to the Quran. Hence the deep, decades-old ties between Lebanese Christians and Shias, which has culminated in Aoun’s (and �������DZ�������’s) victory.

Inside the Washington beltway, imprecise and generic umbrella terms such as “radical Islamic terrorism” and “jihadist” are routinely employed to refer to a complex, multifarious, and distinct milieu of often-militant political forces that exist from Africa across the Middle East to South Asia. More mundanely, little distinction is made between organizations like Hezbollah and al-Qaeda.

US Foreign Policy

For officials in Washington to come to terms with the changing power dynamics in the Middle East, Iran’s historical arc and its guidance of Shia fundamentalism need to be understood. Although events such as Iraq’s laborious retaking of Mosul from Daesh are good PR for the US, the primary geostrategic benefactor is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The incoming Trump administration would do well to understand the differences between the Sunni and Shia fundamentalist movements, and to strategically reassess accordingly. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that better relations with a rational Islamic Republic could foster the kind of alliance balancing that the US engaged in during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, which benefited American regional policy by allowing the US to better navigate the complex political and security dynamics of the Middle East.

For this to be achieved, however, a realization needs to occur within the American foreign policy establishment: Iran and Hezbollah are not the irrational nihilists of Daesh—not even close.

*[This article was originally published by , a partner institution of .]

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No religious minority in the world today has received so much global attention as the Muslims in Europe. From the burkini and burqa ban in France to the alleged charges of involvement in radical activities, Muslims have unceasingly made the headlines and been singled out as a “problem community” in the West. They are deemed as outliers due to their strong attachment to Islam and their aversion to secular values.

Such a bleak picture has been made worse by the rise of Islamic activism since the 1970s. With the growth of Europe-based Islamic movements came loud calls for resistance against the incursion of European liberal norms and lifestyles into Muslim life.

What has emerged from the confluence of media sensationalism of Muslim minorities and Muslim antagonism toward all things Western are influential works with goading, often misleading titles such as “Europe’s Angry Muslims” and “The War for Muslim Minds,” among many others.

SUFIS, SALAFIS AND ISLAMISTS: THE BOOK REVIEW

In this well-researched and cogently-argued book, , seeks to unsettle contemporary suppositions about the “Muslim question” in Europe. Hamid writes from the perspective of a British-born Muslim who, as Akbar Ahmed sharply observes in his foreword, “has channelled his intellect, passion and vigour into writing sharp academic studies and developed new programmes for studying Muslim youth work in the UK.”

Sufis, Salafis and Islamists must, therefore, be read not only as an academic tome about Islamic activism in the United Kingdom, but as a reflexive interpretation of the visions and programs, experiments and failures as well as the fragmented nature of missionary (dawah) activities in the country.

This book is, at once, an oblique reflection by a second-generation European Muslim about the future of Islam in Europe and the paths within which Islamic activists ought to thread in order for them to remain relevant in the face of the challenges of Islamophobia and the global war against terror.

Although limited to the UK, Hamid’s study belies the perception of Islamic activists in Europe as a united front bent upon asserting Muslim values in a secular society. Rather, Hamid shows that Islamic activists have rarely moved beyond the recurrent splits and multifarious disagreements within their own circles.

Islamic activists have, in actuality, taken on different ideological stances as succeeding generations of Muslims adapt to the rapidly changing world, particularly in light of the 9/11 attacks and the London bombings of July 7, 2005.

Indeed, as Hamid expertly notes, the British Islamic activist landscape is so diverse and fluid that it makes difficult to situate its actors within the typologies and categorizations devised by many preceding scholars. The author, however, leans closer toward Tariq Ramadan’s depiction of Islamic activism as divided into a few proclivities: “Scholastic Traditionalism,” “Salafi Literalism,” “Salafi Reformism,” “Salafi Political Reformism,” “Liberal or Rational Reformism” and “Sufism.”

But rather than taking such categorizations uncritically, Hamid reconstructs them based on the UK experience by centering his analytical lens on four dominant groups which, to him, could be placed squarely within Ramadan’s typologies. The four groups covered in lucid detail throughout the book are Young Muslims (YM) UK, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), Salafis and Sufis.

Although not made explicit, this book is, in effect, divided into three main parts. The introduction and Chapters one to four provide readers with deep insights into the importance of the four Islamic activist groups, their geneses and twisting fates. Chapters five and six bring to light the discourses employed by the groups to expand their appeal and the various social conditions that aided in their growth and decline. Chapter seven and the conclusion provide an up-to-date consideration of Islamic activism in the UK at present.

LOOKING CLOSER

Chapter one traces the ebb and flow of Young Muslims (YM) UK. Organized and operating in the same manner as the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world, YM gained a wide following among young British Muslims from the 1980s up till the beginnings of the 21^st century.

Hamid attributes the decline of the movement to internal crises and splinter groups that broke away as YM leadership sought to reorient their objectives in the post-7/7 era. One other reason that may explain the decline of YM is the rise of other contending Islamic activist groups. YM’s story parallels that of another movement: the Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT). Chapter two tracks the growth of the group, the programs its members pursued to achieve the dreams of reviving the Islamic caliphate and its belligerent calls for the end of the secular world order.

HT’s utopian visions contributed to its own downfall. Hamid registers this but expresses it in a manner that is somewhat hyperbolic. He writes that HT “offered little that is constructive, beyond vague general prescriptions about the superiority of Islamic systems and did not have much to say about pressing social issues affecting British Muslim communities at the grass roots.” In reality, the movement did engage in many social- and welfare-based activities, bringing youths from troubled neighborhoods such as Bradford and Luton away from drugs and gangster culture. But one has to concede with the author’s main point that HT’s rhetorical claims tended to obscure all of its other efforts at uplifting the dire state of the Muslims.

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In Chapter three, Hamid places in sharp relief the Salafi dawah under the wings of the Jamiyah Ihya Minhaj as Sunnah (JIMAS). Popular only for a brief moment in the 1990s, JIMAS struggled to convince Salafis themselves that it remained true to the methodology (manhaj) of pious Muslims of the past. The advent of different versions of Salafism in the UK Islamic activist scene coupled by the revival of Sufism, however, made it difficult for Salafis to expand their reach in the country.

To be sure, Sufism or the “traditional Islam network,” as Hamid terms it, has been growing from strength to strength as explained in Chapter four of the book. The chief factor that underlies the flourishing of Sufism was the creative abilities of its activists in leveraging upon globally recognized preachers such as Hamza Yusuf to breathe new life and meaning to the Sufi message in the UK. These preachers “re-established Sufism as a legitimate and necessary part of mainstream Islam and inspired young people to deepen their knowledge of religious tradition.”

The next two chapters of the book outline some common themes that surface from the careers of the four Islamic activist groups. Drawing from social movement theory, Hamid discerns that amidst their manifest differences, these groups share the use of similar ideological frames to justify their existence and to rally others to their respective causes.

These frames include “To Be a Good Muslim,” “Islam is the Solution,” “We are One Ummah,” Struggle Between Islam and the Rest” and “The Search for a British Islam.”

The allure of these discourses was to be found in the changing demography of the British Muslim population from one that was dominated by transient migrants who saw the UK as a temporary abode to a community that was determined on making Britain their homes and shaping the country in ways that would make it more conducive for Muslims to live in. Global and local events and the rising terrorist threat in the UK have encouraged Muslims to pay due emphasis to the idea of “moderation in Islam.”

The book closes with an interesting observation that Islamic activists are now moving away from formal and structured collectives and movements to embracing “a post-ideological position, which is eclectic, hybridised and heavily uses digital communication technologies.” This statement deserves a book in its own right, and Hamid is perchance the best person to write it as a sequel to the current study. Whether this trend of “eclectic piety and activism” would lead to the demise of the four groups discussed in the author’s first book remains to be seen.

What is, however, clear is that the informal networks and collectives that are currently populating the cyberspace have the potential of filling in the voids left behind by established Islamic activist groups. They are able to connect with estranged Muslim youths who are cynical toward institutionalized Islam while engaging in issues such as human rights, justice and gender equality—issues that have escaped the attention of erstwhile Islamic activists.

THE VERDICT

Scholars hoping to get an insider and yet critical appraisal of Islamic activism in Europe should take this book as their starting point. Sufis, Salafis and Islamists unravels the complex struggles of Muslims living in the West and their attempts to safeguard their faith, their religious values and moral visions. The book informs us that Islam will continue to the shape the lives of ordinary Europeans just as Europe would inevitably structure and graft Muslim piety in its own image.

*[Sufis, Salafis and Islamists: The Contested Ground of British Islamic Activism can be purchased at the .]

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One of the was that of a beach volleyball game, with bikini-clad German player Kira Walkenhorst on one side of the net and Egyptian player Doaa Elghobashy on the other side, wearing a full body suit and a hijab (headscarf).

While many celebrated this image, which went viral across global and social media, as a marker of Rio’s diversity and a sign that sports are for everyone, other media outlets claimed that the image of veiled women was plain proof of these women’s oppression and imprisonment within the confines of a .

Fox News reporter and opinion writer went as far as to say that the “ridiculous garb they [veiled athletes] are forced to wear in order to be able to compete is not a representation of freedom, but the symbol of the chains with which such countries and backward beliefs still shackle women.”

Oppression, Helplessness, Voicelessness

This view of veiled women as backward and oppressed is nothing new. Since the age of colonization, the Western world’s dominant image of women from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been one of oppression, helplessness and voicelessness. Over the years, this dominant stereotype has not significantly changed. In fact, world events, such as September 11, 2001, have only made this stereotype even more ingrained and widespread in the West.

Not only do Western media largely depict MENA women as oppressed and helpless, but the media often lump the diverse women of the region into one monolithic group, commonly represented by dark, all-encompassing veils. In doing so, the media completely ignore the diverse accomplishments and challenges of the millions of women who inhabit the 20 or so countries that make up the MENA region.

There is no doubt that women of the Middle East, like women across the globe, experience social, economic and political challenges that vary from one country to another. Yet it is also impossible to deny that these women are agents of change and are involved in the various developments that the region is witnessing.

Agents of Change

When the wave of swept the region in 2011, female activists from Morocco, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere were at the forefront of these protests. In 2011, Tawakkol Karman, dubbed “the Mother of the Revolution” in Yemen, became the youngest person to be awarded a for her significant role in the Yemeni uprisings.

Sadly, these uprisings did not lead to the democracy and equality that MENA men and women were hoping for. But one could argue that a significant accomplishment of the region’s uprisings was how they empowered many people, including women. Today, women across the MENA region continue to make their voices heard and to demand social, political and economic rights.

In Egypt, female activists utilize everything from social media to street protests to graffiti art to raise awareness on the sexual harassment epidemic that impacts over . In fact, Egyptian women went from being shamed by their harassers to publicly shaming men who harass them and raising public awareness on this epidemic. More and more women today drag their harassers to a police station and openly discuss their harassment experience, a from women’s years of silence and shame.

MENA women’s activism is sweeping many other countries besides Egypt. In Saudi Arabia, following the women’s 2011 #Women2Drive campaign that was spearheaded by activists such as Manal al-Sharif, Saudi women launched a new campaign in September 2016��to end male guardianship. Over that was sent to the government, calling for an end to the monarchy’s male guardianship system that usually requires women to acquire a male relative’s consent to travel abroad, work or study. This recent movement extended to social media, with many others supporting the initiative under the hashtag .

Change can also be noticed with the women of Palestine. These women are among the region’s most challenged and also among its most empowered and resilient fighters. As says, “Every day is a new Arab Spring for women in Palestine.” On a daily basis, Palestinian women resist Israeli occupation, humiliation at checkpoints, a nine-year Gaza Strip siege, while also managing small business in their communities, taking on leadership roles as well as working to gain political, social and economic equality with Palestinian men.

In war-torn Iraq, the case is no different. Nadia Murad Basee Taha became the first survivor of Islamic State (IS) atrocities to be awarded the title of ambassador for the dignity of survivors of human trafficking by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Taha is now an activist for other Yazidi people in Iraq.

Waves of Change

When MENA women are not engaged in activism to achieve political or economic gains, they are making significant changes elsewhere. The Rio Olympics, for instance, brought to the forefront many who made the region proud. These include Egypt’s weightlifter, Sara Ahmed, the first Egyptian woman to ever win an Olympic medal; Iran’s Kimia Alizadeh, who won a bronze medal in taekwondo, becoming the first Iranian woman to win an Olympic medal; and Tunisia’s Ines Boubakri, who became the first woman from MENA to win an Olympic medal in saber fencing.

Hence, while many in the West view MENA women as oppressed and backward, reality shows how these women have been and continue to be active and significant agents of change across the region.

Yet Western media ignore these women’s accomplishments and efforts. Instead, media outlets continue to frame veiled women with ethnocentric critiques, perpetuating a stereotype largely based on sexist views about women and not one based on facts.

MENA women’s achievements and struggles demonstrate that the veil donned by many of them does not thwart their activism. Rather, one could argue that the real hindering veil is the one that often clouds Western media’s judgment of these very same women.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The US presidential campaigns have staked out their positions on Muslim-Americans, Muslim immigrants and, by extension, Muslims worldwide. These positions have been defined by perceptions about Islam and its various components: the Quran, Sharia law, religious terms such as kafir and jihad, and generally not well understood rituals. Most telling are the images daily broadcast and projected by radicals who use Islam as a cloak for their violence and heinous crimes against mostly other Muslims.

The ongoing conflict is not only between Muslims and those who are not. More and more courageous Muslim voices are being raised against radicalism and extremism as not representative of Islam—and actually in deep conflict with the basic values of Islam. These rejections by Muslim leaders and communities are at odds with those who claim that Muslims are not public enough in their condemnation of extremists who claim the mantle of Islam as justification for their actions.

King of Morocco

Lately, there is growing recognition in the West that Muslim leaders from Malaysia to Morocco are indeed making the case against terrorism and Islamic radicals. In this context, the��Globe and Mail��published����who singled out the king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, as one of many who have boldly challenged the radicals.

He pointed out that the king’s condemnation took on even greater gravitas as he is regarded as a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and has the title “commander of the faithful” as being responsible for the integrity and promotion of Islam, in particular the Maliki school with its strong Sufi texture and emphasis on inclusion, moderation and peace.

King Mohammed spoke on the��, commemorating the resistance of Moroccans to the French occupation. Most Western media accounts highlighted his condemnation of terrorism, noting there is no heavenly reward for terrorists. It is reported that the Prophet��:��“I guarantee a house in the surroundings of Paradise for those who give up arguing, even if��they are in the right; and I guarantee a house in the middle of Paradise for those who��abandon lying even when joking; and I guarantee a house in the highest part of Paradise for��those who have good character and manners” (Sunan Abu Daawood: 4800).

Religion is Conduct

So, when the king said that he wanted overseas Moroccans “to remain firmly committed to their religious values and to their time-honored traditions as they face up to this phenomenon which has nothing to do with their culture or background,” he was emphasizing that values lie at the heart of the practice of Islam, and so to distort the rituals is to challenge the moral core of the religion.

In Islam, there is no eternal reward for passively living in the world.��, a noted Muslim scholar, the hadith “religion is conduct” means that “real worship does not consist only of establishing rituals, but it’s about exerting good conduct/behavior or applying good manners towards others.” This hadith adds that, “Ritual worship is not valid unless it’s largely supported by good conduct.” And further, “None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself” (Al-Bukhari and Muslim).

This emphasis on good works is found throughout the Abrahamic faiths. It is no coincidence that in Islam, human behavior—from commercial transactions to how one treats family members—is guided by values that engender good conduct. In Islam, the link ��is reflected in hadith such as, “Through his manners and good conduct, the believer can attain the status of a person who frequently fasts and prays at night” (Abu Dawoud).

The backstory to the king’s speech is that there is the explicit need for Muslims to act according to values that promote comity, respect and dignity. We are in this world to do good, not evil, and that we should shun those who would tell us to hurt others. As , the Prophet Muhammad said, “I have been sent to perfect good character.” And, “The best of you is the best among you in conduct” (Al-Bukhari and Muslim).

King Mohammed’s words echo the determination of King Abdullah II of Jordan who, like his Moroccan counterpart, has a unique historical role to both defend Islam and clarify its dynamic role in promoting harmony, justice and respect within the human community.

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The hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, is a central ritual of the Muslim faith and one of the largest and oldest gatherings of people in the world. Pilgrims perform the hajj over three days during the last month of the Muslim lunar calendar (the date shifts every year, in reference to the Gregorian calendar).

Pilgrims carry out a specific sequence of rituals at a constellation of sites, recalling activities of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s seventh-century founder. Unlike other major world pilgrimages, the hajj is obligatory. In making the pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest city—Muhammad’s birthplace and the site of God’s revelations to him—Muslims fulfill one of the five pillars of their faith.

For Saudi Arabia, the modern state that is home to Mecca, the hajj is both a lucrative industry—hajj revenues are 3% of gross domestic product (GDP)—and a mass event the kingdom must oversee at enormous cost. In 2015, the Saudis received about 2 million hajj pilgrims, a number kept artificially low by a quota system they introduced in the 1980s to control crushing crowds.

To manage and streamline the annual pilgrim traffic, the Saudi government has invested billions of dollars in a hajj infrastructure that includes two dedicated hajj air terminals, sanitation and health facilities in and around Mecca, as well as highways and tunnels connecting these sites.

Even so, last year’s hajj witnessed tragedy when a construction crane collapse in Mecca killed more than 100 and a stampede outside the city left several thousand dead.

A global phenomenon, the hajj must also be managed by the many nation-states that send citizens to Mecca each year as pilgrims. Today, the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims live everywhere. They negotiate access to Mecca through their countries of citizenship, which issue hajj visas based on the Saudi quota system. (Generally, the Saudis allot countries one spot on the hajj per 1,000 Muslim citizens.)

The process of deciding who gets a hajj visa—as well as how to ensure pilgrims’ safety, and how much states should subsidize the ritual—is complicated. In many countries, demand for hajj visas regularly exceeds supply, and there are long waiting lists, especially for those without political connections.

And, to a degree that many would find surprising, European nations are deeply connected to this annual Muslim event and have been for nearly two centuries.

At a time when mass Muslim��migration to Europe is fueling divisive politics and reviving old fears and��stereotypes about Islam��as a conspiratorial faith that threatens “Western” ways of life, it is important to remember Europe’s earlier interest and involvement in the hajj and its role in shaping the modern history of this sacred Islamic ritual.

Europe as a Center of the Global Hajj

Europe, today, is a center of the global hajj both as a source of pilgrims and as a transportation hub. Large-scale Muslim immigration to western Europe and��the fall of communism��in the east have caused Europe’s Muslim communities to grow. More than 40 million Muslims live in Europe, representing 6% of the overall population.

At least 100,000 European citizens make the pilgrimage to Mecca annually, and their numbers are rising in line with the growth of Muslim communities in Europe, accelerated this past year by��the arrival of over a million migrants and refugees��from��Afghanistan,��the Middle East and��Africa.

In response to their integration into global hajj networks, European governments have been steadily, if rather quietly, sponsoring the pilgrimage.

In Britain, for instance, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2000 helped fund the British Hajj Delegation to provide consular support and medical services for its citizens on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Despite being officially secular,��the French government��posts a consul in Jeddah to help French nationals making the hajj. The most recent consul, a convert named Lewis Blaine, performed his job largely on motorbike, zipping around Mecca and the holy sites to assist French citizens.

Russia—which has 14 million Muslim citizens, the largest population of any European country—has perhaps done the most to support its citizen-hajj pilgrims. Since the early 2000s, under the��Putin��government, Russia’s Muslims have enjoyed discounted flights to Jeddah during hajj season on Aeroflot, the state airline. A state-created hajj liaison office arranges visas and transportation.

And in a new twist last year, after annexing��Crimea��from��Ukraine, Russia offered Crimean Tatars generous hajj subsidies ($1,000 per person, about a third of the cost of an economy package tour) in an obvious attempt to cultivate their loyalties toward Moscow and away from Kiev.

The Hajj during the Era of European Colonialism

Europe’s deep involvement with the hajj began during the era of global European imperialism. By the end of the 19^th century, Europe’s imperial powers had colonized much of Asia and almost all of Africa, and brought most of the world’s Muslims under colonial rule. (Of the world’s Muslim states, only��Persia,��Afghanistan and��the Ottoman Empire��escaped European colonization.) In the decades before��World War I, each of the leading imperial powers of the day—the��British, Dutch, French and Russians—ruled more Muslims in their empires than did any single independent Muslim state.

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One effect of colonial domination of Muslim-majority lands was that the hajj came under European influence and control for the first time in history.

From its eighth-century beginnings after the birth of Islam, the Meccan pilgrimage had been performed almost exclusively under the patronage of Muslim rulers, through Muslim-ruled lands, and with the help of Muslim officials along the way. Hajj pilgrims’ ultimate destination—the Holy City of Mecca—was (and still is) closed to non-Muslims.

Before the era of global European imperialism, Muslims made the Meccan pilgrimage under the auspices of Islamic empires. The Mamluk, Mughal and Ottoman imperial governments all spent large sums to support hajj pilgrims making the long and often treacherous journey to Mecca through their empires, along land and sea routes.

The Ottomans were perhaps the most ambitious as hajj patrons. Each year, they sponsored imperial hajj caravans along major land routes to Mecca. These were enormous affairs of people and animals, led by military escort, and included as many as 50,000 pilgrims by the early 1800s.

To secure the caravan from attacks by bandits, and organize the hajj traffic under their supervision, the Ottomans fortified desert routes linking Damascus and Cairo to Mecca, building fortresses, wells and cisterns along them.

The Ottomans built their elaborate and expensive hajj infrastructure for both symbolic and strategic reasons. Hajj patronage was expected of the Ottoman sultan, as imperial ruler (after the 16^th century) of the Muslim Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina and, with this, his claim to be “protector” of hajj pilgrims and “caliph of all Muslims.”

At the same time, the Ottomans were able to station troops and officials in their far-flung Arab provinces through the hajj infrastructure that they built and the ceremonies they staged around the annual caravans. They were also able to demonstrate the sultan-caliph’s power and benevolence to local subject populations, as well as foreign Muslims.

This situation slowly began to change in the 16^th century. As Europeans pushed into the Indian Ocean and parts of Asia, they conquered Muslim-majority lands and brought long stretches of traditional hajj routes under their direct control. As European empires grew, especially in the 19^th century, so did their interest and involvement in the hajj.

By the turn of the 20^th��century, most hajj pilgrims who showed up in Mecca were colonial subjects. They arrived in unprecedented numbers—as many as 300,000 a year—due to the global mobility revolution that European imperialism had also brought.

Across European colonies, the introduction of railroads and steamships had transformed the Meccan pilgrimage from a small-scale ritual performed mainly by elites into a mass annual event dominated by the rural poor, who packed onto the decks of Arabia-bound steamers on third- and fourth-class tickets. Their wretchedness at the hands of greedy ship captains made headlines in Europe, and provided the moral scandal at the heart of Joseph Conrad’s 1900 novel��Lord Jim.

Sponsoring the Hajj

Having inherited a hajj tradition with their colonial conquests, Europe’s imperial powers had to decide what to do with it. In the mid-19^th century, as hajj traffic between European colonies and Mecca began to grow, colonial officials were essentially of two minds about the hajj. At a time of growing anxiety about burgeoning Islamic political movements as a threat to empire, and fears of the hajj as a spreader of cholera and other infectious diseases, some suggested banning the hajj.

This was especially true after 1865, the year a massive cholera outbreak in Mecca became a global epidemic, spread far and wide by dispersing crowds of hajj pilgrims. After this epidemic—which killed more than 200,000 people worldwide in cities as far away as New York City—the European powers convened the first in a series of conferences that identified the hajj as a sanitary and security threat to empire. But attempts to ban the hajj proved impossible: As a pillar of Islam, and a duty for Muslims, the hajj could not be easily banned or stopped.

European involvement in the hajj shocked many Muslim observers, who did not expect to be greeted in Ottoman Arabia by Europeans.

Increasingly, as European control of Muslim populations grew over the 19^th century, colonial officials began to see potential benefits in sponsoring rather than restricting or prohibiting the hajj. In the early 1800s, colonial officials began to experiment with hajj patronage as a way to win the support of recently colonized Muslim subjects, while also monitoring their contacts with Muslims from other parts of the world.

In the Russian-ruled Caucasus, tsarist officials in the 1840s started subsidizing hajj journeys for local Muslim elites they were trying to integrate into the emerging Russian administration. Similarly, in French West Africa in the early 1850s, the colonial government offered to pay for the hajj trips of select “friends of the colonial regime,” as part of a broader effort to advertise the toleration of French colonial rule.

By the end of the 19^th century, and for various reasons related to the desire to preserve empire and cultivate Muslim loyalties, all of the European powers began to sponsor the hajj. They subsidized travel between their colonies and Arabia during hajj season, opened foreign consulates along routes to Mecca, and passed new laws to protect pilgrims from physical harm and financial scams.

By the eve of��World War I, European empires were involved in virtually all aspects of the hajj. Most Muslims would have found it impossible to make the Meccan pilgrimage in this era without interacting with European officials.

In Jeddah, the Dutch had set up a multi-service “Hajj Bureau.” The British ran a medical dispensary out of their consulate, run by the vice-consul, a Muslim doctor and British subject from India. And European doctors and nurses staffed the two main quarantine facilities set up to screen hajj pilgrims in El Tor (at the bottom of the Sinai Peninsula) and on Kamaran Island (in the Red Sea).

By sponsoring the hajj, European colonial powers were not simply trying to control it or contain the problems it created as a mass, annual movement of people. Instead, they were seizing an opportunity created by imperial conquests to tap into and co-opt the hajj, a global Islamic network, as a mechanism of imperial integration and expansion.

Through sponsorship, they sought to turn the hajj into an instrument of imperial integration. This was part of the broader process underway across European empires over the 19^th century through which colonial governments institutionalized Islam and Islamic practices��to advance their own imperial agendas.

European involvement in the hajj shocked many Muslim observers, who did not expect to be greeted in Ottoman Arabia by Europeans. Abdürreşid Ibrahim, the pan-Islamic intellectual and activist from Russia, was surprised when he showed up at the Kamaran quarantine station in 1908 and was greeted at the door of the disinfection building by a Christian woman. “Aren’t we in Ottoman territory?” his equally stunned travel companion asked him, to which he replied, “I don’t know.”

Europe and the Hajj, Lessons from the Past

In many ways, the hajj as we know it today bears little resemblance to its early 20^th-century counterpart. Airplanes long ago replaced sea and rail travel and transformed the itinerary of the hajj from a multi-site, months-long journey into a rapid, direct journey between home and Mecca.

A time traveler from 1900 would barely recognize Mecca: The Saudis have bulldozed Ottoman-era buildings and holy tombs around the city to make space for new shopping malls and luxury hotels. And today’s hajj crowds number in the millions, not the hundreds of thousands.

And yet, in an interesting parallel, the hajj today has again become a European phenomenon, as a result of global events and processes connected to European imperialism. Post-colonial migrations since the mid-20^th century, the result of various push and pull factors, have brought millions of Muslims from former colonies to the European continent.

Today, the hajj raises difficult questions for European nations that seek to reconcile national, secular identities with a need to respect the religious freedom of large and growing numbers of Muslim citizens, while also developing new strategies for integrating these citizens into the nation.

At the same time, the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the 1990s—hailed by many as the belated collapse of the last of the European empires—also freed millions of Muslims from state-mandated atheism and brought about a resurgence of Islam in Russia and surrounding former communist states.

Major European airports are now hubs along global hajj routes. In the days leading up the scheduled hajj rituals in Arabia, at airport departure gates in London, Berlin, Paris and Moscow, crowds of Muslim pilgrims gather and pray before boarding flights bound for Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport.

As today’s European states grapple with their own inheritance of a hajj tradition and how best to manage it, history can offer lessons as well as cautionary tales. The history of how Europe’s imperial powers embraced hajj patronage as part of their broader efforts to integrate Muslim populations in their empire has resonance today.

The case of the Russian Empire is perhaps most relevant to the situation of today’s European states. For the British, Dutch and French Empires, the hajj was largely an external issue, located in far-away overseas colonies and not a domestic matter. Russia was different. A land-based empire, Russia had large Muslim populations living inside its borders, and hajj routes that cut through its central Slavic-speaking lands and busy Black Sea ports, and so it had both internal and external interests in the hajj.

For Russia, then, the hajj was not a matter limited to faraway regions and populations, invisible at home and separate from domestic issues. Instead, it was a highly visible, mass, annual event that happened largely within the empire’s borders, and was bound up with domestic issues such as state revenues, identity politics and the integration of Russia’s 20-million-strong Muslim population (about 15% of the empire’s overall population in 1900).

In the early 20^th century, Russia struggled to reconcile its historic identity as an Orthodox Christian empire with the reality of its large and increasingly mobile Muslim populations, whose loyalties, it feared, may have belonged to the neighboring Ottoman sultan, not the tsar.

Many Russian officials wanted to restrict the hajj for many reasons. But how could they do this without appearing to intervene in Muslim practice and violate religious freedom? Conversely, how could they extend patronage to the hajj without upsetting the Russian Orthodox Church and losing its crucial institutional support for the regime?

Many of these same questions confront European officials, including in Russia, as they struggle to manage the hajj and accept it as part of their evolving national cultures. These are not so much new questions as old ones, rooted in Europe’s colonial past and made urgent for the European powers during the first wave of globalization in the late 19^th century.

By exploring Europe’s overlooked, ambivalent and complex role in the history of the hajj, we can begin to see that present-day discussions of Islam in Europe have a deeper history, and that perceptions about Muslims today are in many ways colored by stereotypes and prejudices refined in the late 19^th century.

For instance, many European colonial officials in the early 1900s feared Mecca was a center of clandestine, conspiratorial and anticolonial plotting. But no great anticolonial revolt was ever plotted in Mecca. And firsthand accounts by more than one pan-Islamic activist reveal how disappointed they were by hajj pilgrims’ indifference to politics. Abdürreşid Ibrahim, a leading pan-Islamic thinker and activist, lamented that he was unable to engage the simple, pious Muslims he met in Mecca in political discussion.

It remains to be seen how Europe will adapt to its new and growing role as a center of the global hajj. The context today is very different, and yet there are lessons to be drawn from history. The European embrace of hajj patronage was certainly opportunistic and imperialistic; the aim was to protect empire and, by accommodating Islam, subdue and integrate Muslim colonial subjects.

At the same time, there was a certain optimism to this policy that we should note: European officials did not simply fear Islam and its global dimensions, exemplified in the circular migration of Muslims between the colonies and Mecca. In the Russian case especially, there was a widespread belief that the Islamic inheritance of the hajj offered opportunities, not just dangers, and could be remade, not just suppressed, into a Russian tradition.

Today, the hajj raises difficult questions for European nations that seek to reconcile national, secular identities with a need to respect the religious freedom of large and growing numbers of Muslim citizens, while also developing new strategies for integrating these citizens into the nation.

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After at least 15 years of violent extremism within its ranks, Islam has still not organized an effective counter campaign toward the proponents of extremist Islam, such as the Islamic State (IS), al-Qaeda and others. One need only look at the events of last week during Islam’s holiest month, Ramadan.

Terrorist attacks in��,��,����and����have claimed the lives of , mostly Muslims. The latter occurred in Islam’s second-most revered city, Medina, home to the mosque and tomb of the Prophet Mohammed. All of the attacks are believed to be the responsibility of the Islamic State. One might also add the Orlando nightclub attack of June, whose perpetrator claimed to be acting in the name of IS.

A Rising Death Toll

According to the organization����(TROP), this year’s Ramadan “bombathon” is responsible for 238 attacks and 1,850 deaths. Since 2001, there have been�� in some 28,700 attacks by terrorists. In 2014 alone, more than��, nearly twice as many as the previous year.��Almost all of these were claimed by, or believed to be the responsibility of, groups designated as Islamic extremists. In 2016, we have seen 1,218 extremist Islamic attacks in 50 countries, taking the lives of more than 11,100 people and injuring 13,420.

These numbers stagger our minds and rock our faith in humanity. In the West, the reaction to extreme violence in the Middle East and Muslim world is increasingly . And in the region, citizens wonder if anything can be done other than helplessly watch this tragedy play itself out. How can this happen? And why has the rampage been able to continue for so long?

Islam at War with Itself

In 2015, to take up the battle against extremist groups responsible for terrorism. While acknowledging that both regional (largely Muslim) states and the international community have a responsibility to confront Islamic extremism, he rightly asserted that: “It is mainly our battle, us Muslims, against those who seek to hijack our societies and generations with intolerance and��takfiri��ideology.” The latter is the practice of declaring someone an “unbeliever,” justifying the taking of the unbeliever’s life.

And if there is an act to underscore that��, it’s the attack by one extremist Islamist group on Muslims in the city of Medina, the burial place of the prophet.

Islam has no single unifying leader behind whom to unite. Catholicism has its pope and orthodox Christians have their counterparts who speak up in the name of the faithful and are largely, though not blindly, followed by the faithful.

Terrorism experts and political leaders around the world largely agree with King Abdullah II. The war, battle or campaign against Islamic extremism is one that only Muslims can lead. That includes leaders at national levels, organizations, local institutions and individuals, all acting to stamp out such violence, the beliefs that justify them and the campaign to spread their infectious and deadly ideology. Non-Muslims can and must contribute to the effort. But it must be led by Muslims.

So, why haven’t they been able to unite? The reasons are several and do not bode well for future action.

Why Inaction?

First, sectarianism is real within Islam.��Today, Sunnis remain genuinely concerned about what is happening to them in countries like Syria and Iraq, where Shia are seen as if not the enemy, then at least adversaries. And while Sunnis are not lining up behind Sunni extremists like IS or al-Qaeda, they are nevertheless reluctant to openly oppose groups like IS aggressively taking on Shia antagonists and their Iranian backers.

To Sunnis, the largely Western-led counteroffensive appears one-sided—i.e., eliminating violent Sunni extremists while seemingly only talking about the role of the Shia aggressors. That view is shared at the local level as well as at the most senior levels in countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Therefore, uniting Sunni and Shia in a common undertaking to defeat extremism in all of Islam is simply untenable and unlikely in the near term.

Second, Islam has no single unifying leader behind whom to unite. Catholicism has its pope and orthodox Christians have their counterparts who speak up in the name of the faithful and are largely, though not blindly, followed by the faithful. Islam has influential imams and sheikhs but no single person. Iran, in the person of the supreme leader, has its unifying figure but he certainly doesn’t speak for Sunnis or even Shia outside the Islamic Republic. In fact, Islam even lacks a charismatic or political figure, not necessarily clerical, who could speak to and for all Muslims convincingly.

So, without someone like a John Paul II to confront communist repression, or a Lech Walesa or Vaclav Hovel to unite a nation in common cause, or even an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Andrei Sakharov to speak to the moral imperatives, it is hard to imagine all Muslims coming together behind a unified effort.

It must be pointed out, however, that a lack of unified effort does not mean the absence of widely shared antipathy among the worldwide Muslim community toward religiously motivated violence. Muslims the world over do, in fact, condemn such violence. But in the absence of a moral authority as unifying figure, they haven’t actuated that rejection or coalesced behind a common effort.

Third, if Muslims are the only ones who can lead the effort against this ideology, it stands to reasons that they must have a countervailing ideology. While there have been many condemnations and criticisms of the extremists’ ideology, no one has offered anything so persuasive that it has convincingly set back or eroded the attractiveness of that of the terrorists.

One idea perhaps might be simply to promote Islam as a “religion of life and humanity,” as opposed to the culture of death promoted by so many of the extremists, from the Islamic State to Hamas and Boko Haram to Abu Salaf. John Paul II and Solzhenitsyn, for example, were able to expose in compelling fashion the evils of communism and also offer more humane philosophies for human interaction, governance and behavior even in conflict.

Fourth, governments in the Arab world are not consensual. So, leaders and senior officials lack the mandate to call people to action other than through the sheer exercise of power. This insecurity may lead to inaction or hesitancy to place their positions on the line, so to speak, by taking a hard and firm position and then calling their citizens to genuine action with real authority. Their publics simply lack faith and trust in their leaderships, a serious detriment to common and concerted action.

Finally, when it comes to initiative on most issues outside of self-preservation, governments of the Middle East have an unfortunate tendency to depend on the West. And the latter is often all too eager to step up. The current effort to staunch the Islamic State is led by the United States with strong backing from other Western governments. Arab governments had failed to act outside their respective borders.

The West’s support is certainly vitally necessary, but one must ask why was initiative so late in coming until the West—i.e., the US—acted? And when will Muslim leaders and governments seize the initiative to come together to present the desperately needed, overarching counter-narrative to the extremists as only they can do?

Looking at some of these reasons for failure and the continued absence of leadership on this issue in the Muslim world, one may have to conclude that prospects are slim for rapid change. Little action can be seen in any of the cited areas at the moment.

Until these shortcomings are addressed successfully, we may have to endure more Baghdads, Dhakas and Istanbuls.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

There are plenty of interpretations of this poem, written by W.B. Yeats after World War I, and its memorable lines have inspired many novel and film titles. It is especially appropriate today as we see the failure of the center to hold against the tide of radicalism from the left and right.

Attempts to reason against the illogic of blaming all Muslims for the acts of a very few fall on deaf ears among skinheads, Donald Trump supporters or others who are too ready to blame “the other.” The center cannot hold because it has little capacity to counter extremism, which would require more awareness of Islam and Muslims than most are willing to engage.

Muslims themselves are torn between justifying acts of reasonable opposition to autocratic regimes and pointing fingers at those whose horrific acts undercut every word of compassion uttered by their communities. It is ironic that the vast majority of extremists call themselves Sunnis, Salafists, jihadists, while Shias, whose excesses of past decades in Lebanon and obdurate policies emanating from Iran, are tarred with the same brush as al-Qaeda franchises and Daesh (Islamic State). Despite 1,400+ years of separation, in the end, they are all Muslims, all guilty.

To non-Muslims, Muslims are equally culpable for a multitude of sins stretching from Indonesia to Nigeria to Europe and even North America. To most Americans, Muslims are predominately Arabs, as are Iranians, because “what’s the difference?” They all share the tenets of Islam, a religion of hate and submission we are told by the Trump apologists on talk radio. Muslims, they claim, are unwilling to live in peace with the rest of humanity (read Christians) because of religious precepts.

Far be it for these supporters to actually shake hands and converse with a Muslim, although they may have been doing it for years without contamination. Enlightened statements by President Barack Obama, leading military and intellectual leaders, and well-intentioned political leaders have not impacted those who fervently believe that Muslims are somehow a lower form of humanity that won’t rest until the apocalypse has come—strangely similar to most Christian evangelicals.

Clash of Civilizations

My concern is both broad and deep for my country and for the lack of civility that characterizes public life. I have worked and lived with Muslim communities my entire professional life, here in the US and in many Arab countries, and Iran, which I know is not Arab. I have always thought it a blessing (baraka you could say) that my parents taught me compassion, inclusiveness and openness, especially to that which I did not understand or feared.

While mine was a mostly normal American childhood, bigotry was somehow always lurking around, in remarks, insinuations, teasing. My sister/poet Elmaz writes of the pain of discrimination and marginalization—I guess it’s harder for some. Mine was more cerebral, since I was fortified by not giving a damn.

I am a Christian Arab American; we are the majority of Arabs in the US. We weathered the Palestinian and Lebanese conflicts as highly political rather than theological conflicts. So much is different today. We hear from varied sources about the persecution of Christians by Daesh. Lost in the hateful news is that the tyranny of Daesh—acting in the name of Islam—has been responsible for far more Muslim deaths. Daesh and its comrades are enemies of humanity, not just of religions.

The same drumbeat of deprecation is rising even louder in Europe as tides of immigrants and horrific violent acts deprive the��center��of a stable platform for engaging doomsayers, bigots and racists of all stripes. In our naive caricature of the region, we want clarity about friend and foe. This is no easy task. It is somehow lost in translation that we are in a generational identity struggle among ourselves and with those “not like us.” It is a struggle that we cannot, each in our own way, avoid confronting.

Just think for a moment: Why are refugees headed for Europe and beyond? Is it because they hate the West, its civilization and its society? Is it because they are hiding terrorist cells within their numbers waiting to strike? Or is it because, like us, they just want to wake up each day to the tedium of jobs, families, children and traffic?

It is this normalcy that is under attack and must be forcefully countered. We are certainly in a clash of civilizations—humanity against the beasts who deny us choice.

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Background

A cursory Google search for the term “Muslim women” largely produces a single image: a black sheet. Muslim women are this single stereotype: a black robe covering a brown-skinned, exotic, sexually charged damsel-in-distress. This image brings with it a host of other adjectives that are equally restricting: oppressed, subjugated, silent, invisible.

From Princess Jasmine to the poster for��Homeland, these women exist for the pleasure of men, hidden behind screens in a harem, patiently waiting for European colonists to rescue them from their plight. Although it seems farfetched, the idea of��“”��Muslim women has been used as a justification for Western intervention time and time again: from the blue burqas in����to the silence over����killed by the Taliban in favor of����one.

The assertions that Muslim women suffer are, however, true:��,��limited to seek divorce and recourse after rape,�� and����are all major issues in Muslim countries. The symbolic black robes originate in Saudi Arabia, which coincidentally also tops the list of countries where lack of��, especially the ability to drive, are frequently highlighted. It is indisputable that Muslim countries, most notably those within conflict zones, top the list for most dangerous places for women.

Why Do Stories of Muslim Women Matter?

A one-dimensional portrayal of Muslim women, however, and Muslim women’s issues, erases the multifaceted causes: globalization, conflict and patriarchal systems among them. It hides the fact that many countries, including����and��, had advanced women’s rights before the brutal conflicts and intervention they now face.

Furthermore, this narrative ignores the stories of Saudi women who����the driving ban, the disproportionately higher number of educated women in countries such as����and��, and the movement toward trendy “” fashion and high clothing��lines dedicated��. It obstructs the stories of pioneering young women like��,��,����and����from being heard.

Farah al-Zahrani © Elena Koshevaya

It also glosses over the emergence of����such as the late����and����and their attempts to engage meaningfully with religious texts to redefine what it means to be Muslim and a woman. The struggles with and against patriarchal systems, abuse and even����in mosques are not only ongoing, but increasingly evident.

If only the first narrative exists, Muslim women are forever the silent victims, unable to speak for themselves and waiting for a savior. It creates a binary between the��—validating the idea that the only way to be “empowered” is to also be globally north or “Western.” This identity is tied closely with the idea of being individualistic, a commodified consumer and, in some cases, secular. While some Muslim women might choose to embrace this “girl power” flavored identity as a valid form of self-expression and identification, allowing��it as the only options silences any other definitions of empowerment.

The two strains of this identity—what it means to be “Muslim” and what it means to be a “woman”—are an ongoing negotiation for most women that is both complex and nuanced. Reducing this process to a single image or stereotype is both counterproductive and reductive.

The response of an increasing number of Muslim women is an insistence on performing their own identities in the����sphere. Whether this means becoming a Brazilian jiu-jitsu artist, a competitive boxer, a business owner and entrepreneur or an activist, Muslim women are eschewing the idea that they must adhere to anybody’s standard and critiquing the identities forced upon them by outside forces, including globalization.

The only way to understand what it means to be a Muslim woman is to listen to the stories of Muslim women.

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According to a widely disseminated 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, the . Taking the cue, Daniel Dennett, one of the four horsemen of��,��wrote��that for centuries, and if the trend continues, religion will disappear—at least in the West.

Dennett joins many thinkers such as Voltaire, Auguste Comte and Max Weber, who have over the course of centuries enthusiastically sounded the death knell for religion in various ways.��Modernization theory��and its corollary secularization thesis did much to bolster and almost cement the idea that religion and modernity are engaged in a zero sum game. For many observers and analysts, a smoking gun in the case for secularization and the death of religion is the�� and the rise of “nones”��in the West. This incontrovertible piece of evidence, however, does not show that religion is on the wane, but that it is changing forms.

Far from kicking the bucket, religion has been thriving, changing and gaining in influence in various hues of everyday lives across the world. Religion, in other words, is here to stay. This phenomenon is discernible by looking at three interrelated aspects of how religion and religiosity are increasing, adapting and finally impacting societies across the world in a post-secular age. These facets of religion are punctuated by contradictions, upheavals and innovation that��are central to understanding its transformation across the world.

Believing Without Belonging

The perils of identifying religion with a tangible structure are many. Changes in religiosity due to the impact of globalization do not lend themselves hostage to��. Most surveys about religion go by narrow definitions and ask if respondents have been to a place of worship in the last seven days. They do not take into account the factor of “believing without belonging” (the category of “unaffiliated” is usually��). People no longer want to be dictated the terms to their spiritual success. There is seemingly an aversion to organizing lives around central and impenetrable institutions. This aspect of religion where faith exists independent of structures and institutions led the sociologist Grace Davie to write of them as “.”

As the sociologist Nancy Ammerman writes, people are����and do find religion in everyday lives, but move away from the institutions of the church. Thus, many Christians retain their Christian affiliation, but not with other Christians as part of a large and global institution. The “nones” as a group connote that religious activity, especially in America, will increasingly take place outside the ambit of the institutional church and, therefore, the question is about its form rather than survival. Thus, the����are Christians without Christian affiliation. Most of them today are not against religion per se but institutions.

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In Canada, as well,����and belief in angels at��. In the United States, belief in angels is also staggeringly��. In Latin America, popular religion is also making major strides against institutional religion. Its reasons for the decline may be evident in its��of the past, especially in Argentina.

China and Russia

With the advent of the post-Cold War era, countries that sponsored atheism have come to realize that religion still packs a punch. In China and Russia, the uses of religion are not lost upon its political dispensations. Russia has increasingly drawn its support in favor of the Russian Orthodox Church, and China has gradually toned down its anti-religious stance where the fastest growing religion is��. It realizes that religion may provide resources for stemming social unrest and protecting the��.

In Russia,����identified themselves as Orthodox Christians in 2008. In spite of the state-sponsored militant atheism for decades, religion refused to die and, today, in the form of the Russian Orthodox Church continues to exert an��. Article 36 of China’s constitution recognizes five official religions—Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism—but they are regulated and closely monitored. Many still fear the Chinese state apparatus of being seen as overtly religious or having a religious membership, since movements with large following or popularity such as Falun Gong are��.

One among the many lives of religion is its contradictory nature wherein it could be marshaled for ideological reasons as well as recruited as a conduit to the wider world. For both the Russian and Chinese governments, religion offers a toolkit for building a new society or coming to terms with the changes that ripple across the world through globalization.

Africa, meanwhile, is a����as it is expected to be the locus of religious growth and boom over the next few decades for Islam and Christianity. On the other hand, while not growing as fast as Christianity, Islam and Hinduism enjoy commitments higher than in any previous centuries. In fact, out of all the world religions,��.

How Religion Adapts

One obvious reason as to why religion survives is that it is adept at adaptation and is always tweaked for the local environment. It is important to note that religion is a chameleon of sorts with its dynamics, and not an immutable structure that is etched in stone forever.

According to a widely disseminated 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, the US is drifting away from religion.

However, contrary to this, world religions seek to see/depict themselves as homogeneous entities that embrace��. But this aspect of world religions has more to do with how they wish to see themselves. Their legitimacy is premised upon permanence and past prestige. Even if these religions lay claim to being universal and espouse orthodoxy as well as orthopraxy, they are locally rooted and indulge in��. Additionally, they continually interact with other religious communities (sects, denominations and religions) influencing as well as being��influenced,��. Thus, the local lives of the world religions matter as much as the global.

New religious movements, too, do not seek a modern birth or depict themselves as products or globalization, but see themselves as��heirs or successors from bygone eras.

Any world religion, for that matter, is not monolithic, but a tissue of representations that results in confrontations and contestations across the world with other faiths as well as within itself. The result is an unending contestation in making and unmaking of practices and identities. As a consequence, world religions of today��may vanish—as have—centuries from now, and relatively insignificant and unimportant movements of today can gather steam and acquire world religiosity in the future.

With the onset of global forces and communication technologies alongside population mobility, boundaries are increasingly traversed, bringing in a diverse range of perspectives leading to a stressful situation for older religious institutions. In such a scenario, some may adapt and others may render themselves maladaptive.

Loss of Trust

A discernible macro trend across the world is the loss of trust in religious institutions and leaders. They are increasingly seen as irrelevant to the personal lives by many. A����in the US on the honesty and ethics of clergy profession had dropped to 47%, falling below 50% for the first time since 1977 when the question was first posed.

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Religious actors have also been under stress. But they too have adapted. No longer do religious and spiritual teachers indulge in the pulpit preaching from red brick buildings. Instead, they take to satellite TV and the Internet. Every morning, hundreds of television channels across India beam����to predict the day for its followers. In the Middle East, the televangelist��, preaching tolerance and interfaith understanding, bypasses traditional religious leaders and political structures, reaching and influencing millions through new mediums of connectivity. These mediums also provide a voice to Muslim conservatives such as Zakir Naik, who through his����reaches a mammoth 200 million viewers across South Asia and the Middle East.

Thus, the Facebook era provides a platform for liberal as well as conservative voices leaving any unadjusted religious establishment out in the cold.

Religion as an Anchor

With the loss of faith in secular nationalism and a flurry of forces brought in by globalization, traditional structures and institutions across societies are inverted leaving many individuals rudderless in a sea of confusion and disorientation. In this vortex of forces, individuals and communities are continually assailed by myriad perspectives sowing confusion and angst. The sheer multiplicity of choices and options invoke new anxieties. In such a scenario, religion can market itself as a viable option providing a sense of certainty and stability.

In this hodgepodge of scenarios, religious anchoring in social lives can go either way. It can become a����that seek to rail against the malaise of modernity, Westernization and multicultural tendencies of the contemporary world or can����well with a cosmopolitan ethos.

Many immigrants in foreign societies also use religion not to reject the norms of the host societies, but to����and find a footing. Religion can also provide resources for spiritual values by marketing a common denominator across faiths—a spiritual depth that every religion has. This is evident in the way many people across religions consider themselves as��. With instantaneous communication and connectivity, many have come to realize that there is no one way of being Muslim or Christian. They can espouse identities that need not be along either/or paradigm but can coexist simultaneously.

Religious leadership also can sow ambivalence and easily marshal religion for����as evident in Saudi Arabia. But more importantly, for many, religion and its moral authority can provide resources and act as a vector of change against anti-authoritarianism as seen in. Its presence is discernible in the current global surge against anti-authoritarianism too.

The Post-Secular Age

Europe’s experience with religion has been far different from that of other regions. The church got implicated in its support for authoritarian governments as well as for ratcheting up a conflict that led to the privatization of religion and an elimination of its claims in the arena of politics. But a closer look shows that this alleged demarcation between religion and politics is not rigid even in the West. It is porous and fluid. Politics in America, as well as France, show that religious discourse married to a����is not absent—as it is purported to be.

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In Muslim-majority countries, on the other hand, especially the Middle East, Islamist movements have been at the forefront in opposing authoritarian regimes by disseminating��. Thus, while the vehicle of opposition to authoritarianism in the West was channeled through a secular toolkit, one forged from religion helped mount a strong opposition to authoritarianism in Muslim-majority countries.

Triggered by a loss of faith in secular nationalism along with betrayed promises, colonialism and an association of “secularism” with��, many in the Arab world have turned to religion as a source of alternative locus of identity. Secularism in this sense is imbued with suspicion and looked at askance. Compounding this, the persistence of religiosity across societies has created issues for the states where a purported liberal political system nevertheless seeks to exclude religion from the political decision-making by dubbing it as����that needs archiving.

Sensing the increasing role religion has been playing in politics as well as the public sphere,����as a term has been suggested to diagnose such a situation. A post-secular society is marked by a recognition that religion has returned, or a realization that it never actually disappeared��but remained merely unnoticed. It recognizes the abiding role religion plays in society and gives credence to the idea that it is a repository of resources for community and ethical building.

More importantly, it seeks to overcome the antimony that is placed on the secular/religion. Religious and non-religious communities and individuals are thus equal in a post-secular society. The post-secular is also marked by a development where political demands are not restricted to the realms of the social and political arena, but increasingly involve cultural aspects as well.

But a rejection of secularism here is not tantamount to a rejection of democracy or religious pluralism or freedom for that matter.��—a hard-won bargain between Islamist and secular parties—is emblematic of post-secular developments where Islam is the state religion but derives its legitimacy from the people and bestows freedom of religion and rights on all without discrimination. The question that animates Muslim societies is not whether democracy is compatible with Islam. That has been answered emphatically and affirmatively. But��what form it would take is a crucial development to look forward to.

Moreover, differing versions of secularism attuned for the local environment can have distinct consequences for societies. In Turkey, with its proximity to the European Union, Western notions of secularism are imposed��.

India, meanwhile, has seen a��. Armed with a growing confidence, the new digital generation desires a bigger role for itself and thus by extension for India in the global arena. In such a scenario, its toolkit comprises entrepreneurship, business acumen and an unqualified embrace of��vikas��(development). Religious pluralism and a climate of coexistence are welcome but not essential and, in fact, non-essential if seen as encumbrances in this��.

The older and pre-enlightenment form of religiosity allowed for a lot of diversity in the Middle East and South Asia. But with the post-enlightenment, religion can easily be linked with nationalism and ethnicity sharpening the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. Whether the post-secular moment results in a toxic mixture of religion and exclusionary politics or agreeable compromises with inclusive religiosity, religion will be the central actor.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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When Republic presidential candidate Ben Carson����recently by questioning whether a Muslim American could (or should) ever become president of the United States, his assertions recalled����raised by a political supporter of John McCain’s presidency at a rally seven years earlier.

“I can’t trust Obama,” Gayle Quinnell told McCain, “I’ve read about him … and he’s an Arab.”

Whether she meant Arab or Muslim, two identities often conflated in American understandings of Muslims, her fears revealed deeper concerns by some segments of the American public about the loyalty of Muslim Americans to the US.

McCain’s response was equally revealing. He did not challenge the idea that Arab Americans or Muslim Americans could and should be trusted to occupy the highest office of the land, but instead, he defended Obama against the “accusation” of being Arab. Obama was not an Arab, he responded, “he’s a decent family man, citizen” as if being an Arab or Muslim American prohibited decency or ties to family—or even American citizenship.

As Carson’s more recent statements have revealed, public expressions of hostility and distrust toward Muslim Americans have only become more����and normalized in American public discourse. This rise in public expressions of have undoubtedly been fueled by US governmental policies of targeted surveillance of American Muslim communities that emerged after 9/11 and have resulted in dire repercussions that move beyond just public discourse, including a��dramatic against people perceived to be Muslim or Arab.

Historical Look

But it would be a mistake to assume that such sentiments are a recent phenomenon that emerged only after 9/11. Islamophobia has a long history in the United States that can be traced back as early as the colonial era, when��European settlers carried their with them to the New World.

Debates over the ratification of the US Constitution included discussions over whether Muslims and other non-Protestants should ever be able to assume political office. Indeed, as scholars have demonstrated, anti-Federalists used the specter of a Muslim, Catholic or Jewish American to unsuccessfully argue for religious tests in the US Constitution. Despite failing on the national level, religious tests banning non-Protestants from occupying political offices were integrated into several state constitutions.

In this regard, American Islamophobia must also be understood alongside historical expressions of anti-Semitism, anti-Mormonism and anti-Catholicism. Of course, over the course of American history, fears of disloyalty have also extended to other minorities deemed potential fifth columns in American society. The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the majority of whom were American citizens, is only one of the most telling examples.

But throughout American history, Islamophobia extended beyond just the domestic sphere.��In the 19^th century, many Christian Americans saw themselves as a crucial leader of global Christendom. Fueled by the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening, Christian activists saw it as their divine role to spread Christianity to the “heathens” of the world. When it came to the Muslim world, they portrayed the “Christian world” in a global battle of “cross against crescent.” Such feelings would rise to the fore when Americans witnessed revolutionary movements by Ottoman Christian subjects against Ottoman Muslim rulers. American support for revolutionary insurrections in Greece in 1821, Crete in 1866 and Bulgaria in 1876 drew the attention of thousands of Americans who rallied to their cause, based in part on their belief that such battles were part of this alleged global battle between Christianity and Islam.

At these moments, Americans maintained that Muslims’ alleged religious fanaticism, political and religious decadence, and intolerance for other religions made their rule over Christian subjects and, to a lesser extent, Jewish subjects an imperial, political and moral anomaly.��Such beliefs also pushed American to actively support the extension of European empire to lands ruled by Muslims, including the Ottoman Empire and Morocco.

Although it would be a mistake to trace an unbroken trajectory from the 19^th century to the post-Cold War period and, more importantly, to the post-9/11 era, it would be equally erroneous to discount the ways in which hostility toward Islam and Muslims has persisted, albeit in varied forms.

Samuel Huntington

Indeed, American Islamophobia never fully vanished; it reappeared with force during the ideological and foreign policy vacuum that emerged after the Cold War. Whereas some political scientists advanced the notion that the end of the Cold War had brought about the��“”��and the ideological victory of liberal, secular democracies, the late Samuel Huntington theorized an alternative vision of the world in his 1993 essay, “The Clash of Civilizations,” which he later expanded into a full-length book.

Simplistic understandings of Islam and Muslims would help drive the actions of American policymakers and military officers during post-9/11 engagements in the Middle East. During and after the 2003 war in Iraq, military rulers and policymakers at the highest levels relied on the book, The Arab Mind, a widely discredited study by Raphael Patai originally published in 1983.

According to Huntington, a simplistically defined “Islamic Civilization” would play a central role in a global “clash” against an equally simplistic construction of the “West,” broadly understood as Euro-American civilization. His theory resonated with many Americans not because it was accurate, but because this particular kind of discourse has a long history of shaping how Americans identified itself��against��the Muslim world.

Huntington’s arguments appeared particularly prophetic after the events of 9/11. As President George W. Bush noted days after the 9/11 attacks, “the American people are beginning to understand. This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while.” Less than a decade after the publication of Huntington’s influential article, the Bush administration’s “Global War on Terror”����to explain its emerging ideological conceptualizations.

Simplistic understandings of Islam and Muslims would help drive the actions of American policymakers and military officers during post-9/11 engagements in the Middle East. During and after the 2003 war in Iraq, military rulers and policymakers at the highest levels relied on the book, The Arab Mind, a widely discredited study by Raphael Patai originally published in 1983. The book purported to explain the shared (and identical) “mentality” of Arabs in the diverse areas of the world, noting that people in the West did not realize how much Arabs hated them.

Patai’s book helped convince neoconservative policymakers in Washington��“.”��The book became “required reading” for many soldiers and officers on their way to Iraq.��As a journalist for ��noted in 2003, such beliefs were publicly expressed by American military officers: “‘You have to understand the Arab mind,’ Captain Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division, said as he stood outside the gates of Abu Hishma. ‘The only thing they understand is force—force, pride and saving face.’”

The repercussions of such dehumanizing beliefs about Muslims on American policies at home and abroad appear obvious, particularly after the release in December 2014 of the����on the use of torture by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents between 2001 and 2006. Such policies reveal a continued and unfortunate practice of simplifying the identities of peoples around the world who happen to be Arab or Muslim, often with brutal consequences.

As these most recent examples demonstrate, American Islamophobia remains a powerful force in shaping domestic and foreign policies that impact the lives of Muslims in the US and abroad. Far from a recent phenomenon, however, such attitudes are deeply grounded in American history.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Legends of the Assassins first appeared in medieval times and circulated widely in both the Middle East and Europe. Arising from the mysterious practices of the Nizari Ismailis and their unwavering devotion to their chief—the so-called Old Man of the Mountain—these myths depicted the group as a band of drugged murderers bent on senseless mayhem.

The prominence of these stories shows how readily fictions, if repeated long enough, may be confused with facts. These fanciful tales eventually became ingrained as historical reality for many citizens of the medieval world. These myths persist in modern times, with occasionally made in the media between suicide bombings of Islamist radicals and certain Nizari practices that led to their reputation as the world’s first political assassins.

Nizari Ismaili History

From their beginnings in the 8^th century, Ismailis represented a minority Shiite Muslim community that challenged the prevailing Sunni order under the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. Aiming to establish an Ismaili Shiite caliphate in the Muslim world, Ismailis were continuously persecuted by the Abbasids and other ruling dynasties among Sunnis.

The Nizaris, a subdivision of Ismaili believers, posed an effective challenge to the Abbasids. They founded a state in Iran in 1090 with a subsidiary in Syria, which was destroyed by the all-conquering Mongols in 1256. Syrian Nizaris lost their political prominence in the 1270s.

All those suspected of being Nizari were often rounded up and massacred by the Saljuqs, whose colonial rule over Iran was resented by Iranians of all social classes. It was under these circumstances that the Nizaris designed their strategy against the Saljuqs’ superior military power: They aimed to eliminate Saljuq rulers and dignitaries who posed threats to their survival. Such strategies proved very effective, ensuring the continuation of the Nizari state for almost two centuries.

Crusaders and Assassins

After seizing Jerusalem in 1099, the Crusaders had extensive encounters with the Nizaris in Syria, who had established a principality of their own in an extremely hostile environment. The Crusaders were particularly impressed by highly exaggerated reports and rumors of targeted murders committed by the Nizaris.

Those responsible were called �ھ��岹’is—youthful devotees who risked their lives to serve their community. Individual �ھ��岹’is were indeed sent on selective missions to tactically eliminate prominent adversaries, often in public places.

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But the Ismailis did not invent the policy of assassinating enemies—a practice employed by all Muslim factions at the time, as well as by the Crusaders themselves. Confronted by the overwhelmingly superior military power of the Crusaders, the Saljuqs and other antagonists, they adopted this method of retaliation in order to safeguard themselves from conflicts with adversaries who could mobilize large armies.

As a result of their efficacy, many unrelated assassinations of religious, political or military significance in the central lands of Islam were attributed to the daggers of the �ھ��岹’is, who rarely survived their own missions. This explains why the ensuing legends revolved around the recruitment and training of the youthful �ھ��岹’is, for these tales were meant to provide satisfactory accounts for daring behavior that seemed otherwise irrational or strange to medieval Europeans.

Assassin Legends

Writing on the topic of Western views of Islam, describes the years 700-1140 as an “age of ignorance” and “triumphant imagination” that��resulted in a “highly distorted and absurd image in Western minds.” There were many such distortions, including the name “Assassins,” from which the��English equivalent was inherited. The name was evidently based on variants of the Arabic word hashishi, which was applied pejoratively to the Nizaris by other Muslims. The term was originally used to mean “people of lax morality,” without accusing the Nizaris of actually using hashish—an intoxicating product of the cannabis plant. The literal interpretation of the term, depicting the Nizaris as hashish-users, emerged from the fantasies of medieval Europeans who remained ignorant of Islam in general, as well as actual Ismaili doctrines and practices.

The Assassin legends themselves, recounted in this author’s��book,��, consisted of a number of separate but interrelated tales, including the “training legend,” the “paradise legend,” the “hashish legend” and the “death-leap legends.” They were rooted in the general hostility of Sunni Muslims toward Shiite Ismailis, as well as Europeans’ fanciful impressions of the Orient.

Developing in stages, they culminated in the version popularized by Marco Polo, wherein the seemingly blind obedience of the �ھ��岹’is to their leader, Hassan Sabbah, was attributed to the hallucinatory influence of hashish. The drug, according to the most popular accounts, was administered regularly to the �ھ��岹’is by their leader in a secret garden of paradise. In this alleged secret garden, which simulated all the pleasures expected by Muslim martyrs in paradise, the would-be �ھ��岹’is supposedly had a foretaste of the eternal reward that motivated them to carry out the Old Man’s death missions.

However, despite the hostile disposition of Sunni authors toward the Shiite Nizari Ismailis, there is no evidence even in contemporary Muslim sources suggesting that hashish, or any other intoxicating drug, was supplied systematically to motivate the �ھ��岹’is. At any rate, by the 14^th century, the Nizari Ismailis were generally depicted in European sources as a sinister order of drugged assassins. These mythical murderers would come to be seen as precursors to modern-day terrorists.

Modern Myths��

Contemporary scholarship in Ismaili studies, initiated in the 1940s and based on genuine Ismaili textual sources, has now begun to deconstruct and dispel the medieval myths surrounding the Nizari Ismailis and their �ھ��岹’is, who were deeply devoted to their community.

And yet, negative associations persist. Despite only very superficial similarities between the strategic techniques embraced by the �ھ��岹’is and the actions of contemporary terrorists, comparisons between the two are still drawn and permeate the popular perception. For example, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks came a reissue of by the prominent Orientalist Bernard Lewis. , who has studied the Assassin legends, observes that Lewis’ underlying that extremism and political violence are innate to Islam “seems to result primarily from an anti-Muslim discourse which has unfortunately informed many scholars of Nizari Isma’ilism.”

It��can be concluded that medieval Nizari Ismailis, who were a minority Shiite religious community then struggling to survive confrontations with a number of superior military powers, had nothing in common with modern-day Islamist terrorists who not only randomly kill innocents, but also destroy monuments of humankind’s shared cultural heritage.

In actual fact, the medieval Nizaris embodied qualities of piety, learning and community life, demonstrated by their construction of libraries, support of scholars of all faiths and vast intellectual contributions to Islamic culture—traditions that continue in the modern-day progressive ethos of the Nizari Ismailis.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Preparations for this year’s Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca undertaken by devout Muslims at least once in their life, have been marred by the�� at the Grand Mosque, which killed more than 100 people. The tragedy came just over a week before the pilgrimage was set to get underway and has raised serious questions about the repercussions of rapid construction growth in Saudi Arabia.

The����is one of the world’s largest faith gatherings, attracting increasing numbers of pilgrims in recent decades—from around 30,000 in the 1930s to more than 3 million in��. This is a striking case of an ancient religious practice transformed by modernity. In earlier times, the arduous journey to Mecca faced its dangers—many pilgrims perished crossing the deserts of Arabia or drowned in��—and the time it took restricted numbers considerably.

From the 19^th century onward, better transport and health facilities greatly mitigated the dangers and��. Along with the involvement of commercial agencies offering organized tours, this made the journey much safer and more predictable.

Growing economic resources, especially��oil, in many parts of the Muslim world also provided increasing numbers of people with the money to embark on pilgrimages. In recent years, an increase in the worldwide Muslim population and the perception that their faith is under attack from the “War on Terror” have encouraged participation in this affirmation of a universal Muslim community.

Most significant of all has been the inception of air travel, which enables Muslims from around the world to make the journey safely in a matter of hours rather than months.

The Saudi Arabian regime has also����facilities to support pilgrims—and to control them.

Massive building projects, rapid transport services and even air-conditioned walkways have been developed to ensure that pilgrims move quickly through the various stages of the pilgrimage. These developments, along with the recent�� that led to the crane tragedy, have enabled the authorities to increase pilgrim numbers and enhance the Hajj’s contribution to the Saudi economy.

They have also , angering many who complain of cultural vandalism as the city’s older quarters are being erased and replaced by high-rise complexes and luxury hotels for rich pilgrims, while poorer pilgrims find it increasingly difficult to afford lodgings.

At the same time, the kingdom’s official����promotes these new edifices as sightseeing attractions in its campaign to increase tourism in the region.

The developments outlined above reflect a common pattern central to the nature of pilgrimage across religious cultures. Although often portrayed as a journey of faith and even asceticism, pilgrimage has long served a simple desire to get away from home and has served as a mechanism for ,��as well as for faith.

Pilgrims’ progress

In earlier eras, pilgrimage was often the only way people could travel. In pre-modern Japan, for instance, permits to travel beyond one’s region were only issued in order to take part in pilgrimages to well-known but distant religious sites. Unsurprisingly, this led would-be travelers to take on the guise of pilgrims, while pilgrimage sites also became major ��offering visitors the chance to relax and enjoy themselves, as well as to express their faith and engage in religious rituals.

Civil, commercial and religious agencies have long been keen to promote pilgrimage not just to enhance faith but, like Saudi Arabia, to spur .

In��, for example, pilgrimage is rooted in the supposed apparitions of the Virgin Mary in��. However, other factors were also important in transforming Lourdes from being just one of many localized French pilgrimage sites into a major national and international site. The entrepreneurialism of local authorities and merchants who avidly seized on the rumored apparitions and the miracles connected to them as a way to regenerate the town’s failing economy, and who helped develop a local infrastructure of cheap lodgings, sightseeing attractions and shops selling goods associated with the shrine, was important. So was the opening, in 1866, of a��railway��connecting that made the once-remote town accessible to the general populace.

The��, a 900-mile journey around Japan’s fourth island to 88 Buddhist temples, was initially an ascetic journey embarked on mainly by young men. By the late 1940s, it had almost died out, but it was revived and transformed in the 1950s after , seeking to regenerate the island economy and branch out into new areas of enterprise started package pilgrimage tours.

With support from both the mass media and local authorities intent on promoting the island as a travel destination, the pilgrimage has increasingly been portrayed less as a religious journey and more as an example of Japanese cultural heritage—an orientation that resonates especially with older generations in Japan. The temples, eager to boost pilgrim numbers in an age of declining religious fortunes, supported these developments, as did a growing infrastructure of comfortable lodgings and transport links.

© Shutterstock

As a result, previously remote mountain temples can now be reached by road or cable cars (very popular among modern pilgrims), and the pilgrimage is readily performed by people of all ages.

The “True” Essence of Pilgrimage?

Commercial engagement and the actions of civil authorities and tourist agencies are often dismissed as antithetical to pilgrimage’s “true” essence. But in reality, the dynamics of the marketplace are central to the whole practice of pilgrimage.

They have been embraced both by assorted religious authorities seeking to promote their shrines and by pilgrims themselves, who are keen to pray, enjoy a bit of comfort and even go shopping at the markets that commonly surround famous shrines. They have expanded the clientele of pilgrimage sites and democratized the practice. That much is evidenced by the elderly Japanese who now travel around Shikoku, or the villagers from Indonesia who can fly to Mecca.

Yet such democratization comes at a cost. In Shikoku, for example, the emphasis on attracting visitors has led to a downplaying of , while a recent report by Catholic authorities stated that more visitors to Lourdes could be considered as .

Such issues are evident, too, in the aftermath of the Mecca crane crash, and they raise questions about the modern changes that have been so useful in increasing pilgrim numbers. Perhaps it’s time for Saudi authorities to consider whether the precarious balance between pilgrimage and consumerism may be shifting inexorably in favor of the latter. The destruction of Mecca’s old quarters, the rise of luxury hotels and the Saudi tourist agency’s promotion of the Mecca tourist sights all point to that conclusion.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In this TEDx talk at Fatih University in 2014, I took the opportunity to explore the nature of minority experiences in the West, with a particular focus on .

The key issues to consider are the processes of immigration, integration and multiculturalism in the context of policy and practice. But the crucial issues of racism and institutional discrimination are also significant features in the study of Muslim minority experiences in the post-war context of western .

Due to limited social mobility as a result of the lack of education among first generation immigrants, who subsequently became citizens, it placed significant burden on future generations to achieve education and employment success, given the “penalty” faced by the pioneers.

Though there have been significant developments to the educational successes of subsequent generations, there remain problems of social mobility that are about structural and cultural discrimination. This might have taken shape through the lens of race and ethnicity during the 1970s to the 1990s, but in the current period, especially since the events of 9/11, Muslim groups have faced additional significant setbacks.

What this reality does is to create the conditions for radicalization and Islamophobia, fueled by external foreign policy endeavors in the Muslim world, which create consternation and identity conflicts among an array of marginalized groups, including the former majority indigenous working classes.

This TEDx talk illustrates the nature of the concerns in the current period that are a function of history, politics, religion and contemporary culture in societies facing all sorts of ongoing divisions and polarities, with globalization and neoliberalism acting as overarching frameworks, further encumbering the potential for positive ethnic and cultural relations in an otherwise complex and fraught social world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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There is a great deal of attention paid to events and issues across the . The region draws the eye of policymakers, commentators, analysts and the populations of these countries as a whole. Much of this focuses on violence, extremism, tribalism, corruption, resistance, dogma, authoritarianism, militarism and underdevelopment.

There is a perennial gaze that focuses on the Middle East as a collection of weakened nations susceptible to despotism, sectarianism and ideological and cultural backwardness. In the writings of Edward Said, this is described as Orientalism.

In left-leaning circles across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, considerable attention is given to the role of the US foreign policy apparatus and its implications for these regions. Inside the , however, such considerations are not always given the same degree of attention, allowing the status quo to prevail. Since 9/11, while America has continued its interventions across the Middle East, there has also been a perception that America is facing decline. But how true is this in reality?

Post-War America

Over the years, the US has perpetuated notions of security, prosperity and liberty, but this has been rather counter to its foreign policy dynamic. Much of this goes back to the beginning of the 20^th century, but it is the period soon after World War II, when many nations of western were busily trying to annihilate each other, that American power grew.

By the end of 1945, the US was producing 50% of the wealth created by the entire world. During the period of 1939-45, America effectively doubled in size. By 1970, the US had only 25% of the wealth-creating potential of the world at its disposal. It roughly remains the same today.

But the US also had its own role in the creation of a self-inflicted decline. In the 1970s, finance became the dominant mode of wealth creation. This was followed by the rest of the developed economies, including Britain, which saw the decimation of its own manufacturing sectors in the 1980s. By the 1970s, the US had farmed out most of its essential manufacturing sectors to the Far East.

What this did in the US, and subsequently everywhere else in the developed world, was to create a form of neoliberalism, which concentrated enormous wealth in the hands of a few, while real incomes had declined or stagnated for the most. Crucially, while there is a sense of the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, it is directly related to the concentration of political power among the same people. The very rich have all the power. If we look at American influence on three levels — military, economic and cultural — we can see certain repeated patterns.

George Bush © Shutterstock

Capitalism has won as the world has become a planet of consumers. Economically, while there are nations on the rise, their role in the future of world geopolitics has yet to be determined.

But the extent of American military power still remains unprecedented. No nation comes close, no nation spends anywhere near the amount that the US does on military and defense, and no nation dare contest the US in direct military combat. This is in spite of the fact that since the post-war period, America has routinely engaged in interventions across the world, with very little result in reality. In the present climate, America engages in proxy wars, or works through NATO, to achieve its ends. While the “War on Terror” has been a categorical failure, the military-industrial complex that is so powerful in the US is reluctant to let go of the foothold it has over American politics and society.

Muslim World: In a Bind

While America and the West do have their acute problems, there are severe issues that affect the Muslim world. The Muslim world is in an ironic bind. Survey after survey of Muslims across the globe confirm the view that Western capitalism, individualism, atomization, racism and decadence, as they see it, are the least desirable aspects of a world system that is dominated by America.

But these Muslims also feel that America offers freedom, liberty, technology and opportunity that could never be afforded to them in their parts of the world, where there remains significant disdain toward US foreign policy — largely because of the impact it has had, and the long-term legacy of interventions in the Middle East and across the Muslim world by the West.

There is also a particular intellectual framing that prevents Muslims from dealing with real issues in real-time, leaving many confused, anxious and consequently ill-prepared to deal with the challenges that face them. Muslims understand that there are genuine problems in the West led by capitalism and its implications. But the solutions Muslims seek in this regard often refer to a return of a pure form of Islam that is absolute, timeless, validated and entirely applicable in modern times.

There is an intellectual vacuum at the heart of the Muslim world, which has regressed in light of the events of the last five centuries. Perhaps it is even longer if one looks back to the Golden Age of Islam and the center of knowledge, wisdom, science, technology and the role of religion in life and the importance of agency on this earth.

Many Muslims, and even within Western contexts, find themselves unable to bridge the gaps between modernity and tradition, between history and present times, between thought and practice, leading to a penned-in mentality — an “us and them” approach, a form of Occidentalism no less. The reality is that many Muslims are habitually immobilized, straitjacketed, simply unable to rise to the task because they face an inherent contradiction between what they believe is true from the point of view of their theology and religion, and what they comprehend as happening to them as Muslims living their lives in the world today.

All the Abrahamic religions suffer from this absolutism conundrum, but some are able to confront and effectively address the realities faced in life without self-demolition of an intellectual kind or an “ostrich in the sand” approach. In the United States, which remains a largely Christian nation, there are innumerable churches with distinct variations of Christianity in practice. While they may differ from each other and people may refrain from worshipping in the others’ churches, they coexist on one land. Sectarianism does not lead to violence or conflict. The same could be said of Jewish communities and the variations within the faith that is found among Jews not only in the US, but across Europe and in Israel too.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama © Shutterstock

Sectarianism is a considerable issue that faces Muslims, and while some of the current issues are a function of historical interventions by the West, Muslims still possess a degree of agency that is frequently underutilized.

All of this stems from a lack of confidence, a lack of knowledge, the disrepair of the intellect and a genuine sense of foreboding about the scale of what are regarded as the primary challenges. Muslims in Islam have been through many of these contestations before, but there is no good in harking back to the past.

In the rest of the world — now led by capitalism, with all its discontents, and with all of the concerns that stem from the problems of inequality, racism, bigotry, isolation and alienation in capitalist societies — there is a certain sense of freedom that many in the Muslim world cannot achieve. This leads to the exploitation of Muslims by their own leaders, who use Islamization as a political tool, while the very same leaders kowtow to the spoils of Western capitalism and all the immense benefits that it provides to the few at the expense of the many.

In a sense, as a result of US foreign policy in the Middle East and across the Muslim world, there is a circular reality that traps ordinary Muslims who are then subjugated by a global system. While this is true in reality, consistently the representation is of Muslims as the problem. That the violence they carry out is the most significant of its kind in relation to other forms of violence in societies and in regions of the world. And that the Muslim bogeyman is the most worrying and frightening of all bogeymen, thereby seemingly legitimizing intervention, engagement and mobilization of policy that seeks to redress what are regarded as imbalances. It leads to invasion; wars based on weak precedents, if at all; and of an “us and them” dichotomy within the Muslim world, but also among those in the West, principally in America, which is geographically, intellectually and culturally so apart.

Sea of Change

In many ways, ordinary Muslims are affected by issues within their own domestic contexts that are a function of underdevelopment, tribalism, despotism, militarism, cronyism and authoritarianism. There is also a tremendous mis-education of the populations as a whole, largely due to a lack of investment in education per se, as well as the gaps in Islamic education filled by external interests with motivations systematically far more ideological in nature — extremists as it were.

Certain national leaders in these Muslim countries exploit this scenario, in order to maintain their positions of power over their own people. Looking at all of this in a global context, the role of American imperialism fuels the anger and frustration that is already palpable in Muslim societies, due to the ongoing machinations of Western powers from the colonial era onward. Many Muslims are caught in a double bind, from within and without.

The rules of the game are set by those with the most dominant of interests, but those who suffer the most are those who have least to lose. This cycle needs to be broken if we are to return to a world where there is balance, harmony, peace and trust that built the foundations and strengthen societies based on liberty, freedom of thought, freedom of action and freedom of consciousness.

Sadly, in the end, the reality is that as the world is further divided, the polar positions taken by different segments of society are becoming further embedded. Major media, political, academic and cultural actors have set their cards out quite clearly.

There are a great many people who promote fairness, justice, tolerance and liberty for all — values that are essential for a greater humanity. But we must remember that the work of the good will always be least recognized and appreciated in the context of the work of the bad, who are the few but, sadly, also the most loud. At times of a lack of cohesion, it is regularly the extremes that are heard loudest.

The population of the Muslim world is rising rapidly compared to other parts of the globe, yet the necessary gains in economic, cultural and political development to meet the needs of these nations do not exist. America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, is devoid of new big ideas, as are most parts of western Europe.

The Muslim world, which has suffered most in the 20^th and 21^st centuries as a result of Western interventions and internal decline, is mired in deep structural and cultural problems. Very little is likely to change unless there is a dramatic sea change.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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I often get into debates with people about women in Islam. How we dress. How we don’t dress. What we think or don’t think or should be thinking.

I also get into debates about feminism. What it is and what it isn’t. I think I’ve spawned permanent foes because I don’t care to apply the label, feminist, to describe myself. (I’m not one for labels, sorry. But if it’s even required of me, “Muslim woman” suits me just fine.)

But if we could agree for a moment that there exists a pure definition of the word feminist — to mean awesomely fierce to the millionth degree — then I’d like to introduce you to Islam’s first feminist: Khadija bint Khuwaylid.

Khadija was the wife of the (peace and blessings be upon him). And she is one of the people I think about when I face or debate issues surrounding women today. Khadija’s existence precedes mine by more than 1,400 years. But if I can, at the very least, continuously strive to emulate her character, I will consider myself a success in life.

Seven things you might not know about the awesomely fierce Khadija (may God be pleased with her):

1) She was a successful and esteemed business-woman.

I would give anything to do an on-the-job ride-along with Khadija. Gladly swipe my car for a camel; my laptop for a government-issued glass weight to measure goods in trade. What could I learn in one day of shadowing this highly-respected business leader — trading furniture, pottery and silks?

Khadija was born to a father who was a successful merchant in their Quraysh tribe of Mecca. She inherited her father’s skills at a time in history when society was male-dominated and dangerous. Upon her father’s death, she took over the business and traded goods through the primary commerce centers at that time — from Mecca to Syria and to Yemen — hiring the most trustworthy men of character to brave the dangerous trade routes.

Her business was larger than all of the Quraysh trades combined, and it was the most acclaimed with a reputation of fair-dealing and high-quality goods.

© Shutterstock

She had a keen eye and was highly intuitive, earning the monikers, Ameerat-Quraysh (“Princess of Quraysh”) and al-Tahira (“The Pure One”) due to her stellar reputation. Khadija knew what she was doing business-wise, never compromising her modesty or integrity to succeed in the male-dominated trades — hiring only those that could meet these standards.

Glass ceiling? Hah! 1,400 years ago, yes, Khadija shattered it.

2) She turned down many marriage proposals.

Being the most successful woman around, rich in worldly attainment as well as character, it seems Khadija faced a consistent campaign of men seeking her hand in marriage. She was married twice before her wedlock to the Prophet. Both of these marriages produced children and both left her widowed. Her keen sense of character left her picky; and she was less than eager to suffer another painful loss of a husband. She resigned herself to being a widowed woman, taking care of herself and her family.

3) She asked the Prophet to marry her.

Love comes when you are not looking, or so I have heard (and experienced). Khadija learned of the stellar character of Muhammad, as well as his experience managing caravans on the trade routes accompanying his uncle, Abu Talib. She hired him into her conglomerate.

Marriages at this time were typically necessary for survival and not always about love as we know it in today’s world. But Khadija didn’t need a husband to take care of her financially. And Muhammad did not have the means to seek a wife.

She fell in love with him, and through a friend, she asked him to marry her. He said yes.

4) She was 15 years older than Muhammad.

If Khadija’s story hasn’t broken stereotypes about Islam yet, it might intrigue you to know that she was 40 years old when she married Muhammad. He was 25.

5) She was an ideal wife; theirs was a true love story.

“Your wives are a garment for you, and you are a garment for them” (Quran 2: 187).

Taking multiple wives was a common practice, yet Khadija and Muhammad’s marriage was monogamous until her death 25 years later.

Muhammad’s prophethood began during his marriage to Khadija, when he received the first of God’s revelations through the Angel Gabriel that left him frightened, strained and feeling alone when no one believed in him. Khadija comforted her husband and encouraged him during the most difficult days of his life. She bore him six children. He loved no one more than Khadija during his lifetime.

6) She was the first Muslim.

Khadija, the mother of Islam, was the first person on earth to accept Muhammad as the final prophet of God and accept the revelations that culminated into the Holy Quran. She was greeted with “salam” (peace) by God himself as well as the Angel Gabriel. She bequeathed her worldly goods and put herself in the face of danger to stand by the Prophet Muhammad as Islam became established in the land.

7) She spent her worldly riches on the poor.

In Islam, whether rich or poor, one’s financial condition is a test. Khadija gave her earnings to the poor and to the orphans, to the widows and the sick. She helped poor girls get married and provided their dowry.

Khadija was one of history’s most remarkable women. Prophet Muhammad once said that the four greatest women of mankind were: Khadija bint Khuwaylid, Fatima bint Muhammad (his youngest daughter,) Mary bint Emran (the Virgin Mary) and Asiya bint Muzahim (the wife of Pharaoh.) Khadija continues to inspire people to this day who revere her for taking great care of the Prophet of Islam and for showing the world, through her behavior, what a pious, modest and courageous woman can accomplish. The example she left for mankind remains timeless.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The US-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that over the next two decades, will make up 26.4% of the world’s population of 8.3 billion people. This means that the worldwide Muslim population will have grown by 25% at the end of 2030.

However, while the population of Muslims in the West is growing, a fear of Islam as an ideology is increasing. This has sometimes resulted in aggressive and discriminatory measures against Muslims, which compels some scholars and thinkers to warn against the rise of “Islamophobia.” The belittling and mocking of Islamic beliefs, the Quran and the — often in popular culture and the media — indicate that Muslims face a serious challenge: How to continue living in Western societies peacefully, while being on the receiving end of hate crimes, the denigration of their faith and the restriction of social freedoms.

Nathan Lean is an American scholar and writer, who has investigated Islamophobia extensively. He is the author of an award-winning , The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims. He has published tens of articles about religious intolerance and discrimination against Muslims in the West for various media outlets, including��The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The Huffington Post.

Lean believes that is a lucrative “industry” that wins skyrocketing salaries for those who promote and contribute to it.

In this edition of the Interview, a new section��for��conversations with individuals from around the world, 51�Թ� talks to Nathan Lean about why Islamophobia is rising in the West and how the fear of Muslims is being magnified by corporate media.

Kourosh Ziabari: Islamophobia has been on the rise in the United States and Europe over recent decades. However, it appears that the tragic 9/11 attacks and the US government’s reaction to them intensified the anti-Islamic sentiments among many people in the West. Do you agree with the premise that the War on Terror eventually turned into a War on Muslims?

Nathan Lean: An unfortunate consequence of the was that it operated on the premise of a “foreign enemy, domestic threat.” While the Bush and Obama administrations went to great rhetorical lengths to avoid conflating the actions of extremists with the peaceful majority, the policies they put in place reinforced the notion that the religion of Islam, and by extension all Muslims, deserved special scrutiny.

Thus, we see a plethora of examples of religious discrimination in the name of national security: The NYPD collaborated with the CIA to spy on Muslim communities in New York, in some cases designating entire mosques as “terrorist organizations”; the FBI paid informants to infiltrate mosques and entrap Muslim worshippers — in one California case, the informant was instructed to sleep with Muslim women; the State Department, in concert with federal immigration offices, delayed or denied visa, passport and citizenship applications based on nothing more than the applicant’s name or country of origin; Congress held a series of McCarthy-esque hearings on “radicalization” of American Muslim communities that produced no evidence such a thing was occurring; and more recently, the White House announced its “Countering Violent Extremism” program, which unlike its broad name, has a narrow focus on the Muslim American community.

Terry Jones / Flickr

These initiatives, and others like them, reinforce the narrative that Muslims — by simple virtue of being Muslims — are a security threat and must be monitored. This fortifies the claim that terrorism is uniquely a religious problem and that Islam is particularly to blame. I’m hesitant to call this a “War on Muslims,” because that buys into the civilizational rhetoric of the terrorists. But what else buys into the terrorists’ apocalyptic worldview of “Islam vs. the West”? All of the disgraceful policies I’ve just mentioned.

Ziabari: People like Geert Wilders or Pastor Terry Jones, who openly denigrated the Quran by “indicting” and burning it, and magazines such as Jyllands-Posten and Charlie Hebdo, which ridiculed Prophet Muhammad through their cartoons, conveniently used the pretext of free speech. Is it really fair to permit irreverence toward some 1.6 billion Muslims and what they consider to be sacred under the guise of freedom of speech?

Lean: and Jyllands-Posten had the “right” to publish their cartoons. But having that right does not mean that what they did was right. In Western societies, free speech is fast becoming a weapon. We don’t fight for it as much as we fight with it. Bludgeoning minority groups in the and Europe with the revered values of liberal democracy is not helpful. Is France better off because a cartoon of Muhammad angered two men who killed 12 people? Has French society gained something from that? Nearly a decade later, has Denmark realized an increasingly freer and more equal society because of its cartoon controversy? In the United States, have the anti-Muslim bus advertisements championed by the ridiculous hate group leader Pamela Geller advanced liberty for ordinary Americans?

No. None of these things have contributed to healthier societies. All of these exercises in “free speech” communicate messages of prejudice. They target a marginalized and alienated group of people, and suggest that in order to be fully European or American, they must accept the defamation of their holy figures in public and cheer on the values that allow for such caricatures and representations to be shoved down their throats in the first place.

Of course, there is a dirty bit of hypocrisy here, too: In , anti-Semitic language — equally as inexcusable as Islamophobia — will likely land you in jail, as will any speech that the government selectively deems offensive. In 2008, actress Bridget Bardot was charged for the fifth time with speech that “incited racial hatred” toward Muslims. Three years later, fashion mogul John Galliano was convicted of uttering anti-Semitic comments in a cafè. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, 54 people have been arrested for the ambiguous crime of “apology for terrorism.”

Free speech is about as sacred to most people as are their religious values: When it works for them, they embrace it. When it doesn’t, they reject it.

Ziabari: The number of Muslims in Europe and the United States is growing rapidly. Many of these Muslims are immigrants who move from developing or underdeveloped countries to the West in search of more prosperous, peaceful lives. However, they are often finding their daily lives more challenging as their civil liberties and social freedoms are being restricted. Are Western governments not responsible for the wellbeing and security of their Muslim minorities?

Lean: European and American governments have an obligation to support the rights of everyone who calls those places home. Ultimately, though, government is a flimsy and often-pathetic institution. Its leaders campaign on value issues, but govern on special interests. A congressman from the deep American South would have little incentive to support policies that facilitate mosque construction or alleviate religious discrimination toward Muslims in the workplace. The same is true for various locales in Europe: An Austrian or Belgian politician caters to the desires of the group that elects them.

This domestic political malaise is also tightly woven to the banner of foreign events — flashpoints of violence like [Islamic State] beheadings — that sow angst at home by fortifying nationalism and common identity. In Europe as in the United States, this may mean a coalescence of racial and religious groups whereby the interests of the majority (non-Muslims) prevail over the minority, Muslims.

Ziabari: Statistics show that of all terrorist attacks that take place in Europe and the United States, only a small portion are carried out by Muslims. For instance, a Europol report showed that in 2010, of the 249 terrorist attacks on European soil, only three were perpetrated by Muslims. This is while a large number of politicians, law enforcement officials and media are inclined to repeatedly talk about the threat of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamist terrorism. What’s your take on that?

Sean Hannity / Wiki Commons

Lean: It is true that the number of terrorist attacks carried out by Muslims in Europe is quite small, compared to other groups. In the United States, that is also the case. The University of North Carolina and the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security released a research report in 2014, indicating that since the attacks of 9/11, Muslim-linked terrorism has killed only 37 people in the United States. Nearly 200,000 people have been killed by gun violence in that same period of time.

The problem, however, is that for most Europeans and Americans, Islam and Muslims are foreign. They exit “over there,” beyond “our” borders. As a result, it’s not the instances of domestic terrorism that we focus on as much as it is the instances of foreign terrorism: groups like ISIS, , the , and others. These groups do kill lots of people. Those images, which circulate on mainstream news media, are not balanced by depictions of non-violent Muslims. This results in a warped view of reality, and the real danger posed by these terrorist outfits is countered, in part, with domestic programs that are premised on the faulty notion that Muslim-led domestic terrorism is the biggest threat.

Ziabari: Yes, as you say, the rise of the terrorist group ISIS has significantly contributed to the growth of anti-Islamic attitudes across the world, making those who believe the Islamic State is representative of Muslims more doubtful about the peaceful nature of Islam. How is it possible to make these skeptics believe that ISIS doesn’t have anything to do with Islam, and that all major Muslim scholars, both Sunni and Shiite, have denounced its atrocities and shameful killings of children, women and innocent men?

Lean: What will cause people to understand that ISIS has nothing to do with the normative Islam practiced by the vast majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims? In a word: time.

These types of prejudgments are not easily rectifiable. Fortunately, however, Muslims today have more tools at their disposal to push back against prejudice and persistent misinformation. While the Internet is a breeding group for Islamophobia, it’s also fast-becoming an outlet for viral memes and other expressions that offer nuanced views. Popular culture, too, is playing a major role. Wildly popular comedians and actors — most of them non-Muslims — are using their platforms to speak out against misinformation that targets Muslims. And as Muslim voices become more centrally featured in the world of popular culture and news — film, television, radio, etc — Americans and Europeans will become more comfortable with the idea that groups like ISIS are aberrations.

Ziabari: In your internationally-acclaimed book, you called Islamophobia an industry. Do you think Islamophobia is really being promoted as an industry? Are there systematic efforts at work to propagate an illusory fear of Muslims, to make them the bogeyman and enemy who is responsible for all the evil that happens today?

Lean: The Islamophobia “industry” is not like the automobile industry: There are no large companies, conglomerations, CEOs or assembly lines. But it is an industry in a more organic sense. A network exists — one that connects dozens of individuals and groups on several different continents. Major foundations with tens of millions of dollars (Donor’s Capital Fund, Scaife Foundation, Bradley Foundation, etc) donate money to think-tanks and pseudo-scholarly organizations and projects (Clarion Project, Middle East Forum, Horowitz Freedom Center, Center for Security Policy, etc) that reflect the donors’ ideological bent.

Pamela Geller

These organizations and projects rely on a handful of self-proclaimed experts on Islam, the Middle East, terrorism, national security and related fields, [including] Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Zuhdi Jasser, Steven Emerson, Frank Gaffney, etc. These individuals manufacture narratives about Muslims and Islam — threat of sharia law in the United States, supposed influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, etc — that are disseminated to bloggers and activists such as Pamela Geller, Brigitte Gabriel [and] Walid Shoebat, who are paid hefty salaries to propagate them.

These groups, which thrive on conservative politics and hard-line support for Israel, form part of an online echo chamber (Jihad Watch, Atlas Shrugs, BareNaked Islam, Gates of Vienna, Blazing Cat Fur, etc). Additionally, through their best-selling books, speaking tours, consulting fees and public events, the individuals in this “industry” draw incomes well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

Ziabari: What role have corporate media companies played in stoking Islamophobia? Media organizations in the West normally take pride in their honesty, transparency and independence. Do they take orders from governments, or simply run their campaign of fear-mongering against Muslims on the basis of their editorial policies?

Lean: The media plays a central role in stoking Islamophobia. While they don’t take cues from the government, they do advance stories that speak to the preferences of their respective audiences. The media’s problem on this issue is threefold.

First, Muslim voices are largely absent. Most often, it’s non-Muslims talking about Muslims, rather than talking with them or featuring them as anchors, reporters, producers or others who can insert nuance, complexity and nurture a more sensitive conversation.

Second, news media is a corporate venture, and money comes from advertisements, which come from high ratings. The way to keep raking in money is to keep raking in viewers. The way to keep raking in viewers is to keep them glued to the story.

So, how do you keep viewers glued to a story when there is little information to report, for instance, after an explosion somewhere in the world? By asking leading questions that keep the story going. Rather than telling audiences to come back when more information is available, reporters often ask questions that suppose, infer, suggest, hypothesize, insinuate, wonder, imagine, conjecture, etc. They do things other than report the simple facts. An anchor might ask: “Do we have any information that this attack in Kansas was carried out by Islamic terrorists?” Another might wonder: “Could it be that al-Qaeda or ISIS affiliates in Europe were behind this slaughter?” Still, we might hear: “There are no indications at this early point that Muslim extremists were involved.” Suddenly, the possibility of Islam and Muslims being implicated exists, which perpetuates the idea that they are the usual suspects. And this sensational storyline — whether it is true or not — usually keeps people glued to their television sets.

Lastly, in some cases, journalists breach objective protocol altogether and intentionally inflame. Fox News is the archetype, with figures like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly bloviating on air about “jihad” this, or “sharia” that. A 2011 study by ThinkProgress showed that Fox disproportionately deploys terms that reflect negative views of Muslims, inserting phrases like “radical Islam” into broadcasts significantly more than their competitors. It is also well-documented that Fox’s chief, Roger Ailes, drives news stories that confirm his paranoid worldview — one that is so teeming with violent Muslims [that] he once put an entire building on lockdown upon seeing a janitor who was wearing “Muslim garb.”

Ziabari: And as the final question, let me refer to one of your previous statements. In a September 2012 interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, you said that Islamophobes and right-wing extremists in the United States make thousands of dollars each year through arousing controversies and spreading hatred against Muslims. How is this possible? Have you really come to the conclusion that Islamophobia is a lucrative industry for right-wingers and neoconservatives?

Lean: Islamophobia is a lucrative industry. It’s a well-paying career for several people, who devote their life’s work to promoting narratives that sustain it.

Take the boorish blogger Pamela Geller, for instance. Tax filings show that she draws an annual salary from her hate group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, of well over $200,000. She also draws income from book royalties, donations to her website and public speeches. Robert Spencer, a New Hampshire-based Catholic deacon who operates the online diary JihadWatch, receives nearly that amount each year from David Horowitz’s Freedom Center.

Frank Gaffney, whose DC think tank was behind the unfounded claim that the Muslim Brotherhood have infiltrated the American government, drew a salary of just under $300,000 in 2011, while David Yerushalmi, who serves as an attorney for Geller and Spencer and who drafted the anti-sharia legislation, raked in more than $150,000, with much of it coming from consulting fees charged to Gaffney and legal fees paid by “lawfare” cases he filed on behalf of his clients.

The Clarion Fund, which produced the anti-Muslim film Obsession, has received more than $18 million, while Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum has reported close to $6 million in income over the years. The Council on American Islamic Relations reports that between 2008 and 2011, 37 different groups earned a combined $120 million in total revenue.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: ��/�� / / /

We bring you perspectives from around the world. Help us to inform and educate. Your is tax-deductible. Join over 400 people to become a donor or you could choose to be a .

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Dust may have settled since the Paris attacks of January 7-9, but the debate over freedom of expression goes on. In the aftermath of the horrific murders, one key issue remains: freedom of expression vs religious conservatism. The attacks were not the first time that extremists have taken innocent lives in the name of blasphemy. But is at odds with Western liberalism?

The objective of a dogmatic religion, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is primarily to bind a society in a moral fabric. When a religious thought or ideology attains the intellectual underpinning of binding a society through moral thread, it develops an authority to dictate a law over its ruled people. Any idea that rules over people naturally becomes political. A religion that rules over its believers behaves like a concept with a political motive of conquering another territory to expand its influence. As a political entity sees any other organization with the same motive as its threat, a dogmatic religion guards its sovereignty very fiercely vis-à-vis any other religious faction. Thus, religion is a political idea that does not like to be subjugated by any other rival thought and wants to conquer other territories as well.

The strength and resilience of religion is beyond imagination: Nation-states can rise and fall, but religion remains unaltered and unharmed with its perpetual existence. But modern societies are governed through a model of nation-state.

Especially in the West, this concept has matured with democracy. It does not mean that during the Middle Ages religion was not an influencing force in Western society. In fact, the significance of religion in the West continued to be vilified by many political and social movements. Western civilization became enriched by movements, revolutions and ideologies like Italian renaissance, French enlightenment and British Magna Carta. It took the West centuries to prepare a ground where an individual was considered the center of all imagination rather than the church.

If you analyze the political and economic history of Europe, it will lead you to think that two human geniuses, Karl Marx and Adam Smith, changed Western thought forever when it came to dealing with the influence of religion on the human mind. Marx unequivocally criticized religion as unaccountable authority interfering in society. Smith relied on individual power for wealth creation as opposed to a centralized state. In both ways, the logic of democracy coupled with socialism or capitalism convinced Westerners that, in order to lead a happy and meaningful life, one does not need to make an appointment with a priest to seek any divine intervention.

But, after all, the West is not the only part of the world. In Muslim-majority countries, Islam as a faith plays a huge role in society. Islam is probably the only religion that has the ability to resist democracy. What makes Islam so powerful is that it can stand as an antagonistic force vis-à-vis the idea of democracy, which rests on values like tolerance and freedom of expression.

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Political Islam Refuses democracy

Historical analysis of Islam tells that Prophet Muhammad was not just a spiritual teacher, but also a ruler of his tribal community, which means he acted as a head of state as well. In Christianity, Jesus was only a preacher, while in Buddhism, Gautam Buddha was a teacher and philosopher enlightening society with the theory of “nothingness.” Not even that, if we look at Islamic history, we find that only in Islam the founder himself conquered territory and set out to convert neighboring communities. History tells that all that converting other communities into Islam was through sheer bloodshed, not peaceful preaching — particularly in northern India.

Observers that Islam sees itself as the only pure faith that exists. Anything that is not Islamic is considered impure. Not even that, it is the duty of Muslims to convert others of impure faith into Islam. From the early phase of its birth, Islam developed a unipolar, prejudiced view of seeing the world — in other words, you’re either with us or against us.

Although there are differences across the globe, Muslim countries often have an old habit of flirting with the theocratic nature of the state. On one hand, Saudi Arabia is the representative state of theocracy. On the other, there are several countries across the Middle East, North Africa and Asia where religion runs the show of power under the veil of farcical democracy or even so-called secularism.

In such states, the religious heads get the legitimate right to rule. Sharia, or Islamic law, becomes the pivot of all political and social institutions. As per sharia, it is Allah who is the supreme sovereign rather than the people. Whether in public or private, Islamic law encompasses all aspects of life: from politics and finance to health and hygiene.

So, a religious tradition of this nature will stand firmly antagonistic to democracy. After all, in democracy, the citizen is made the custodian of power, not any “divine” agency represented by a priest, rabbi or sheikh.

These two antagonistic ideas — democracy and Islam — have been in closer contact since the 20^th century. With mass immigration following due to a labor deficit, the staging ground of this became . The aim of multiculturalism tested the established value system of secularism of those developed democracies. Among other Western countries, France presents a curious example of democracy with non-reformist Islam.

Is France in a Conflict With Islam?

holds its democratic values of liberty, equality and fraternity close to its heart. But when it comes to the interaction of religion with society, the uniqueness of France appears evident from its European neighbors. France is not just any other country of western Europe when it comes to interaction with religion; it is not like where Catholicism plays an important role due to the pope, nor is it like where the Church of England enjoys an affiliation with the crown.

Since Enlightenment, French thinkers advocated for a total separation of state from church, which went on to form French secularism known as laïcité. In secular France, religion was considered an obstacle in building a modern society. Thus, faith was reduced to a personal matter. The French consider the quasi extinction of religion from their society as a symbol of the triumph of individualism and modernity.

Christianity was accommodated and pacified within French society over the years. The attribute for this assimilation goes to the intellectual enlightenment, industrialization and colonization. The politics of Christianity became mollified by the politics of European nationalism, socialism and capitalism.

But Islam, which traveled to France though the people of former colonies, could not create a place of peaceful cohabitation for three reasons. First, it came from foreign land external to Europe. Second, France’s rigid culture of secularism sees Islam under negative sheds. And third, whether people like it or not, the seed of France’s turbulent relations with Islam lies in its colonial past.

According to Michel Tribalat, a researcher at INED, people of North African (Maghreb) descent in France 82% of the Muslim population. That means the majority of French Muslims living in France are of Algerian origin.

French history is scarred with the Algerian War of 1954-62. The wounds of that infamous conflict may have healed, but the distrust and hatred still remain in the minds of French Algerians toward the state. In fact, despite living in France for many years, citizens of Algerian origin often identify themselves as Muslims first and then Algerian. The French identity does not offer any emotional connection to them.

Let’s remind ourselves that in the case of the Paris attacks, two out of the three terrorists were French citizens of Algerian origin. Relations between France and Algeria still remain strained. Surprisingly, not many efforts have been made to mend ties between the former colonizer and the colonized.

It is true that the presence of Islam challenges the fundamentals of democracy. This challenge could become a crisis as the Charlie Hebdo case shows. If French democracy wants to win, then it has to show flexibility, accommodation and inclusion of those who were left behind on the path of progress. French intellectuals should realize that the republican form of the state has failed to make France a truly multicultural society.

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Following the murder of Lee Rigby in 2013, former British Prime Minister offered a characteristically vacuous : “There is not a problem with Islam … but there is a problem within .” That is, while not quite bigoted enough to equate Islam with terrorism in toto, Blair still presents violent extremism as a phenomenon entirely inherent to the Islamic faith. With three teenage British girls recently flying out to join the “,” the subject of second-generation Muslim “radicalization” is once again front page news.

However, Blair’s image of a self-generating dynamic, driven solely by ideology, is a myth. Religious identity, like any other, is not static; rather, as many Islamic philosophers and theologians themselves have clearly understood over the centuries, it evolves through a dialectic with secular-historical circumstance. There is, in other words, no independent, unitary “thing” called “Islam” that can be abstracted from its mundane context and attacked, defended or analyzed as an a priori given.

All this means in layman’s terms is that the emergence of a particular form of any religion is not driven exclusively or even primarily by factors internal to that faith. No matter how fervently extreme and Islamophobes alike try to convince us otherwise, the apparently increasing “radicalization” of European Muslims cannot be understood through clumsily cherry-picked Quranic quotations.

On the contrary: We have to look at society as a whole and ask how the position of “second-generation” Muslims — meaning any from a migrant background born in the “host” country — differs from that of the first. Furthermore, the strength of any particular identity is always relative to the weakness of others. As such, the rise of “fundamentalist” Islamism must be contextualized within the decline of other forms of identity, most notably those based on class, which previously attracted politicized Muslims in the United Kingdom.

The First-Generation: Social Democracy and Class Compromise

The first truly large-scale Muslim migration to came in the aftermath of , when cheap labor was needed to rebuild the cities and industries of the colonial metropole. Actively recruited to fill the jobs British workers were unwilling to take, these laborers were not strictly speaking “immigrants,” but subjects moving from one part of the British Empire to another.

The country they arrived in was vastly different from today. With post-war reconstruction following Keynesian principles of high public investment and full employment, alongside the Attlee government’s commitment to building a universal welfare state, Britain was embarking on a long period of historic “class compromise.” Mitigating the worst effects of capitalism through robust social democracy, this lasted from the Second World War until the rise of Thatcherism. As shown by from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the result was several decades of the lowest levels of inequality seen in the industrial age.

Shamima Begum, Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase

What made post-war working-class gains possible was the mobilization and strength of the working-class itself. Although the relationship between white British and migrant workers was not plain sailing (racism has never been exclusive to the far-right), Muslim laborers not only frequently participated in class-based political movements, but were often among their most committed and militant members.

Indeed, while always conducting simultaneous anti-racist struggles, Muslim and other migrants during this period identified overwhelmingly in class terms. to Professor Farzana Shain��of Keele University:

“In the early post-war years, immigration, religious, cultural and ethnic ties were largely cast aside as Asian Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs worked together and alongside other black and white workers to counter the impact of growing social exclusion, poor housing conditions, racism and economic inequalities. These early immigrants identified, and were also identified by the state, primarily as workers, which was a critical factor enabling alliances to be built with white British workers and trade unionists. The alliance was formed on a secular basis, with religion regarded as a private matter and secondary to the general struggle against the forces of capitalism.”

Like the workers’ movement as a whole, migrants’ mobilization along class lines was facilitated by numerous robust grassroots institutions and organizations. These included independent unions and migrant factions within larger, white-dominated unions, as well as community groups like the Indian Workers’ Association (IWA). Founded in Coventry in 1938 and campaigning on a broad range of social and political issues, this spread across England and included large numbers of (almost entirely Muslim) and workers after the 1947 partition of India.

The 1960s, 70s and 80s also saw the proliferation of radical youth groups among urban Muslim and other migrant populations. Often inspired by the American Black Panthers, these groups attributed their ethnic and racial subordination to capitalism as a general system of oppression and exploitation. Even in the face of widespread discrimination from largely white workers’ movements and unions, such groups nevertheless understood the struggles of migrant and British laboring classes as mutually dependent. This led to a high degree of class solidarity with Muslims and other migrants, including women, often on the front lines of strikes, sit-ins and occupations.

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Writing on the famous 1976-78 strike at the Grunwick Film Processing Plant in Willesden, North London, Jack and Graham Taylor on this cross-ethnic, class-based alliance. Just as radical Muslim youth movements strongly supported the miners’ strike during the 1980s:

“… it was the arrival in Willesden of thousands of [white] trade unionists from all over Britain which was to reassure the strikers [90% of whom were Asian, a significant proportion of these Muslim] that they were not, after all, alone and that besides the right wing section of the labour movement there was also a left wing, a radical and a militant section which responded with class feeling to the call of all workers in struggle, whether male or female, manual or clerical, black or white.”

Alongside this domestic context, the international stage was also conducive to united, class-based struggles. In stark contrast to today, the and existence of the Soviet Union cast global politics in terms of the opposition between capital and labor. Many migrants, moreover, came from “Third World” countries in which anti-colonial struggle and post-colonial developmentalism were heavily influenced by socialist ideals.

Although the first-generation of Muslim migrants faced many challenges and multiple forms of exclusion, the Britain they arrived in was nonetheless characterized by a high degree of class consciousness.�� In significant sections of both white and minority workers’ movements, this stood above and beyond ethnic and religious identities. Ideationally and institutionally, this provided an avenue for Muslim migrants to challenge both their particular racialized subordination and their more general oppression within a united laboring class.

Just as this largely secular (not “anti-religious”), unifying movement was facilitated by the broader conditions of British society and international politics at the time, its decline and partial eclipse by religious identity-politics is an outcome of wider developments in these arenas.

The Second-Generation: Neoliberalism and Class War

It should go without saying that a significant contributor to the rise of Islamist extremism within European Muslim populations is the massive violence of the “War on Terror.” The growing ability of reactionary states such as and to directly or indirectly promote extremist versions of Islam — through networks first established, as Mahmoud Mamdani us, by the CIA during the 1979-89 Afghan War — is also of clear relevance, as are the oft-cited chatrooms and social media sites. I have covered some of these issues , as have many others.

Kadiza Sultana

Less widely discussed, however, are developments within Britain itself which, at least since Margaret Thatcher’s victory in the 1979 general election, have destroyed the post-war “class compromise” and, with it, much of the basis for broad working-class unity.

Inspired by Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, then-Prime Minister Thatcher abandoned Keynesian economics and social democracy for free-market neoliberalism. As analyzed by scholars such as and , this represented — and continues to represent — a project of elite class power and a form of unidirectional class warfare on a massive scale. Reversing the gains of the mid-20^th century, neoliberalism has raised inequality in Britain to more extreme levels than at any point since the 1920s — a fact that not even the deny.

An essential precondition for the imposition of neoliberalism was the defeat of the working-class by the British state, symbolized most memorably by Thatcher’s breaking of the miners’ strike. A rough indication of the extent of the broader assault is the vast drop in union membership: Despite large population growth, this from 13 million in 1979 to just 6.5 million in 2012. Unions themselves are also far less radical, while the emergence of “New Labour” means that there is no longer any mainstream party even moderately committed to the working-class. Alongside widespread de-industrialization, this has severely eroded labor’s cohesion, confidence and consciousness to assert its interests as a unified group.

In both the rising levels of inequality and the loss of working-class solidarity, Muslims have been disproportionately affected. According the , in the UK, 50% of Black Africans, 60% of Pakistanis and 70% of Bangladeshis (all groups with high or near-exclusive Muslim populations), including “second generations,” live in low-income households or below the poverty line, compared to 20% of whites.

As statistics demonstrate, this pattern repeats across Europe. ’s infamous banlieues, largely inhabited by Muslim migrants or children of migrants from former colonies, three-times the national poverty rate. In Belgium, despite the country having one of the European Union’s standards of living overall, 55.6% of ethnic and 58.94% of live below the line. When uneven access to resources so clearly correlates with ethnic and/or religious identities, these easily become politicized in the absence of any counterbalancing class solidarity.

Within its general attack on working-class institutions, the British state also adopted a specific strategy against Muslims. As by scholars such as Arun Kundnani, this involved establishing a network of conservative mosques in major urban centers, explicitly aiming to replace a unified class identity with an isolated religious one. Such an essentially right-wing “divide and conquer” approach was also helped by the failure of the British left to address its own racism and integrate other forms of oppression into its ethno-centric conception of class. Meanwhile, the youth movements of previous decades have been largely de-radicalized, transformed into apolitical community organizations through acceptance of state funding.

Aqsa Mahmood

Even if sometimes fraught with divisions, the first-generation of Muslim migrants thus found avenues to participate in secular, class-based movements that simply do not exist today. However, the sources of Muslims’ marginalization remain and have, in many cases, grown. In addition to the aforementioned increase in economic inequality, these include a dramatic rise in , widespread institutionalized and increasingly draconian “anti-terror” legislation which, as groups such as ��and have shown, primarily functions to legitimate the hyper-policing of poor ethnic minorities — much as the “War on Drugs” has for decades in the United States.

With the institutional basis for class unity having been systematically dismantled and the language of class having been purged from mainstream political discourse, other identities inevitably fill the void. The rise of “fundamentalist” Islam — a thoroughly modern ideology without true historical precedent — can only be understood as parallel to this decline in class association. The process of radicalization itself occurs through young Muslims’ disproportionate experience of the exclusions, contradictions and hypocrisies of Western societies as a whole, not through a religion of which they often have only the most superficial understanding.

That the second generation of Muslims, born and raised in the West, appear far more receptive to fundamentalist Islam than the first is evidence not of any inherent incompatibility between “them” and “us” or residue of civilizational backwardness. It is, rather, a sign of the failure of progressive politics at large and the withering away of alternative avenues of radical political association.

On the Need for Radical Politics

First-generation migrants’ deep involvement in the militant labor movement demonstrates that it is not strictly true to say that British Muslims are becoming “more radical.” On the contrary: they have always been radical, because only radicalism is capable of challenging the multiple, intersecting forms of class and racial subordination to which Muslims populations have always been subjected. When no mainstream party stands for even the basic principles of center-left social democracy, which once mitigated this subaltern status, and within the general context of widespread disillusionment with parliamentary politics, such radicalism is more needed than ever.

Extreme forms of political Islam are gaining ground because, whatever else they preach, they speak directly of social justice, valorize the very forms of identity vilified by wider society and, however crudely, rationalize daily experiences of marginalization and subordination into a coherent worldview within which one can exercise agency as a political subject. A state-sponsored, de-politicized Islam or liberal platitudes simply cannot compete with its directness and power, because they do not speak to the same issues or satisfy the same needs. None of this means that we should regard reactionary forms of Islamism as “progressive”; rather, they occupy the ground where progressive politics once stood.

The rise of such ideologies follows not the logic of Islam itself, but that of wider developments within British society and international politics. It is entirely congruent with neoliberalism’s destruction of class solidarity, with the mainstream framing of problems and divisions in ethnic or “cultural” rather than sociopolitical terms, with the xenophobic hysteria over migrant populations, with the clash of civilizations rhetoric of the War on Terror and with the resulting retreat of economically and politically marginalized groups (including sections of the white working class) into traditional forms of solidarity.

Until the dominance of what Tariq Ali the “extreme centre” of British politics — the largely indistinguishable and entirely uninspiring “moderate” parties advancing elite interests — is challenged and alternative avenues of progressive radicalism open up, no amount of mass surveillance or anti-democratic legislation will dull the appeal of Islamist “fundamentalism.” That will only happen with the rediscovery of a history of inclusive solidarity, anchored in less dogmatic understandings of class capable of both incorporating and respecting the autonomy of the struggles of Muslims and other minority groups.

*[This article was originally published by the .]

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The Kingdom of ��and��Sultanate of ��share significant characteristics: language; basic religious heritage; geographic proximity; a remarkably rapid growth in economic development and prosperity; a dependence on oil and gas income; and elements of Bedouin and tribal culture.

However, there are significant differences. And it is those differences, when viewed in light of those foundational similarities, that may account for the two countries’ differing experiences with violent extremism.

The importance of these nations to and of their relationships with the United States and the West is well-known. Moreover, those relationships with the US are historic. With Saudi Arabia, these ties date back to just a few years after the founding of the modern state in 1932, while��Oman’s began just a few decades after the founding of America.

The assessment and comments offered here are intended neither to criticize, nor applaud either nation. Rather at a time when in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is aiming to capitalize on the turmoil in Yemen, and hundreds, if not thousands, of Gulf citizens are fighting for the (IS) in Iraq and Syria, it is vital to offer an explanation of some of the complex, multifaceted circumstances that may give rise to terrorism, especially Islamist-inspired terrorism today.

The State of Terrorism in Oman and Saudi Arabia

To get a basic understanding of the terrorism and counterterrorism situations of the two nations, it is vital to start with some basic data. Statistics, especially when it comes to subjects like terrorism or terrorists, are often vague and difficult to come by. Actual figures, outside the governments themselves or intelligence agencies, may be non-existent. However, in the case of these two countries, the differences are so stark that precise figures may not be necessary.

In Saudi Arabia, there have been approximately 60 terrorist incidents since 2000, in which either citizens or foreign residents were killed or injured. These include such headline-making incidents as:

1) the May 2003 Riyadh Compound suicide bombings that killed 35 and wounded over 200

2) the November 2003 truck bomb explosion at an Arab housing compound in Riyadh that killed 17 and injured 120

3) the May 2004 so-called Black Saturday rampage at a petroleum complex in Yanbu that left seven people dead (all but one a foreigner) and wreaked havoc on oil markets subsequently

4) the June 2004 beheading of American Paul Johnson in Riyadh, which would set a gruesome precedent for the Islamic State ten years later

Late King Abdullah and King Salman / Flickr

5) the December 2004 al-Qaeda attack on the US Consulate in Jeddah that killed five of US government employees and wounded 14, including ten of the consulate’s staff

6) an April 2005 attempt by male terrorists to enter the holy city of Mecca dressed as women – four were killed, two terrorists and two Saudi security officers

7) a February 2006 attempted suicide attack on the Abqaiq oil facility, the largest in the world, which was foiled by Saudi security authorities but left two Saudi security officers and two of the suspects dead and several employees wounded

8) the February 2007 murders of three French nationals during a desert outing near the ancient city of Mada’in Saleh

9) an August 2009 attempt on the life of Saudi Prince and then-Counterintelligence Chief – and current Interior Minister and Deputy Crown Prince – Mohammed bin Nayef by an al-Qaeda operative killed in the attempt

I was present in the kingdom when many of these as well as other incidents took place, and I witnessed firsthand the fear that gripped the country during that period.

In Oman, according to the US Congressional Research , there have been no terrorist incidents where��individuals have been either killed or injured.

With respect to foreign terrorist fighters, various experts and media have reported that hundreds, if not thousands, of Saudi foreign are engaged in conflicts as close as and and as far away as Morocco and Chechnya. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001, were Saudi nationals. At the height of the war in Iraq, the US their numbers into the hundreds. Moreover, approximately 130 Saudis have been incarcerated at the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, , although there are none today.

By contrast, there are few known Omani foreign fighters. During my time in Iraq, there were several suspected, but it is unsure whether they were actually Omani or had merely spent time there before leaving the sultanate for jihad. No Omanis have ever been detained at Guantanamo Bay. Moreover, no Omani has been convicted of a violent act of terrorism and imprisoned in Oman or outside.

On the financing of terrorism, there are that Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest financier of terrorism. Some of these claims are based on information revealed in State Department cables released through . This may be a bit too sweeping, especially given Iran’s well-known funding of violent extremist groups in the region and elsewhere. Nevertheless, both the 9/11 Commission and the 2005 US Government Accounting Office (GAO) ��attest to significant Saudi-based funding of Islamist extremism and terrorism in the Middle East, including of al-Qaeda.

These and other reports claim that private Saudi individuals and organizations operating through local mosques — as well as formal charitable organizations such as the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and two of Saudi Arabia’s largest, the International Islamic Relief Organization and the World Muslim League — have provided substantial support to extremists and terrorists, including .

John Kerry and Sultan Qaboos / Flickr

Recently, the Iraqi government and others have claimed that Saudi Arabia or individual Saudis support IS, despite Riyadh’s known antipathy for the group. A 2013 Brookings indicated, however, that of the many millions of dollars reaching the Islamic State through donors in Kuwait, where restrictions on such activity are lax, a significant portion may be coming from private individuals in Saudi Arabia.

Nevertheless, these reports as well as numerous subsequent public and US government statements have stopped short of accusing the Saudi government of direct involvement in financing extremism or terrorism. Of course, the term extremism can be relative. But there can be no doubt that individual Saudis are channeling funds of uncertain amounts to extremist groups around the region.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that Saudi Arabia, with strong US and international backing, passed fairly strong laws against such financing after 9/11. Its government signed the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, and established its Anti-Money Laundering (AML) / Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) regime.

The picture in Oman is quite different. For example, in 2014, the Basel AML – an annual ranking by the Basel Institute on Governance assessing country risk regarding money laundering/terrorism financing and focusing on AML/CFT frameworks and other factors – ranked Oman 134th globally; the country with highest risk (Iran in 2014) is ranked as number one. Saudi Arabia ranked 87th among the 162 countries covered.

The Financial Actions Task Force reports that the Sultanate of Oman has set up an AML-CFT system that is essentially in line with international standards, robust and effective.��Oman has also signed and acceded to the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.

In 2009, Oman convicted and to life in prison an Omani businessman for helping to plan terrorist attacks in the country��and to fund a Pakistan-based terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.

This represents the basic situation in each country. They are considerably different. What accounts for the dramatically different situations? How is it that extremism and terrorism and the ideology that promotes them have been able to find a footing in Saudi Arabia but are practically absent in Oman? While both maintain strong security forces whose presence can, at times, be fairly visible, neither is a police state with an overwhelming security force presence.

I would like to posit three factors that I believe can explain, at least in part, why the experiences of these two countries have been so different.

A Unique National Identity

The first significant difference between these two countries is their differing national identities.

Oman © Shutterstock

Oman’s identity as a definable nation dates back to the pre-Islamic period. In the 4th��century, Omani traders were sending trade missions to . These were repeated in the 8th��century. In those second voyages, it is said that the Omanis introduced Islam to eastern China.

Throughout much of its history, Oman was divided. There were coastal, trading Arabs whose land was sometimes identified as Muscat and governed by a sultan. And there were the interior, tribal Arabs governed by an imam. Either both or at least one has been variously governed since the 12^th century by three main dynasties — the most current of which, al-Said, has governed since 1744 when its founder expelled Persian occupiers.

Omanis were among the first of the region to convert to Islam, having done so during the time of the Prophet Muhammad. By the mid-8th��century, Islam, a moderate conservative sect of Islam, took root in Oman and became the basis for the imamate established in the interior. Today, Oman is the only majority Ibadi Muslim nation in the world.

Oman was also the first Arab nation to send an embassy to the US and second, after , to establish diplomatic relations with the Americans.

What this unique history has given Oman and its citizens is an identity distinct from many other Arab nations and unlike any other Gulf State, most of whose identities and borders were established in the post-World War II period. Its leaders, including the currently reigning Sultan Qaboos bin Said, refer to this identity and count on it to engender the kind of patriotism that comes with a longstanding national identity.

One of the significant achievements of Sultan Qaboos has been his ability to elevate Omanis’ identity as citizens of a single nation, while balancing tribal culture and loyalties where they still exist. Islam is a significant component of Oman’s identity but is one of many characteristics that define its identity.

In essence, Omanis know who they are and, therefore, are less likely to fall prey to the depredations of external actors seeking to woo Muslims based on some new, extremist ideology. Omanis’ national identity coupled with the moderation of their Ibadi Muslim faith has inspired a sense of loyalty, even when they may disagree with certain policies. Extremism is not only avoided, it is condemned.

The history of Saudi Arabia is very different. For most of its history, it was ruled by a patchwork of leading tribes, clans and families. While the roots of the ruling al-Saud family go back to the mid-18^th century, the modern Saudi state was not formally established until 1932 under the aegis of the family’s scion, Abdul Aziz al-Saud, or Ibn Saud.

Throughout their governance dating back to 1744, the Sauds were ideologically tied to the preaching of Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, which became known as .

Saudi Arabia © Shutterstock

Wahhabism is a strict, fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam. As he was establishing control of the Arabian Peninsula, Ibn Saud allied himself with a Bedouin army known as the Ikhwan, or Brotherhood, ardent followers of Wahhabism and bent on purifying the Muslim faith and uniting all Muslims. While he eventually had to put down an Ikhwan revolt, Ibn Saud preserved the foundational principle of Wahhabism that endures to this day.

The claimed mission of “purification and unification” of the Ikhwan may sound familiar to us today. It is the same Salafist claim made by al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and virtually all other Islamist extremist organizations.

Today, the modern state known as Saudi Arabia is named after a family and maintains a foundational ideology based on a particular version of Islam. The governing al-Sauds have worked hard to establish a national identity in the kingdom beyond just Islam.

But creating such an identity is problematic, given the country’s guiding principle and history. Its tribal culture, disparate tribes and the unique and indispensable linkage of Wahhabism to their unity under the solitary leadership of al-Saud make it difficult, if not impossible, to conjure an alternative identity to serve the same unifying purpose.

That guiding principle of Wahhabism, of course, can be hijacked. Many, if not most, of today’s Islamist extremist organizations have adopted a similar guiding philosophy and use it to argue in favor of Islam superseding national identity. Al-Qaeda has been trying it even within Saudi Arabia since returned after the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Any governing institution based on a religious belief is, by definition, exclusive. Therefore, as it attempts to become more inclusive, it will inevitably fall prey to criticism that its adherence to that faith or pursuance of the faith’s objectives is deficient, corrupt and contrary to the faith.

Indeed, these are criticisms that have been leveled by a number of today’s extremist groups like al-Qaeda and IS at the governing al-Sauds. So, if the foundation principle of the Saudi state, as instituted by the Sauds, is viewed as corrupt or even illegitimate by others claiming to be the champions and real “purifiers and unifiers” of fundamentalist Islam, then what is the consequence for that state’s national identity?

Divergent Roots

The second characteristic that may account for the two countries’ differing experiences with extremism and terrorism is their divergent social and cultural roots.

Both nations share a Bedouin and tribal heritage. They are similar in many ways for that part of the world. But they also are significantly different in some important ways.

Westerners have lost almost all of the elements of tribalism we once had – at least those of European heritage. In Europe, tribalism was effectively eliminated beginning with Rome’s conquest of present-day Europe and continuing with the empires and monarchies that succeeded it.

For Americans and other Westerners, therefore, our scant knowledge of tribal culture comes from what we might know about Native Americans or other indigenous groups. Otherwise, we most often identify our so-called tribe by our political affiliation, favorite sports team or even the university we attended. None of those begins to approximate tribalism in the and especially in the Arabian Peninsula.

Tribal cultures tend to be suspicious of the other — the outsider. Outsiders are not necessarily unwelcome; in fact, Arab Bedouins are rightly famous for their hospitality. But an outsider is always such and can never be treated as a member.

If you want to understand just a bit of what Arabian Peninsula tribal cultures and customs are like, I heartily recommend reading the great 20^th century explorer, Sir Wilfred Thesiger’s , Arabian Sands. In it, Thesiger recounts his repeated expeditions across the Rub al-Khali desert of Arabia in the mid-20^th century. He wrote of some Bedouins having to protect him from others because he was a non-Muslim foreigner. His protectors were Omanis.

The aforementioned difference between coastal Omanis and desert Omanis is becoming vaguer with time. The insular, tribal nature of the desert Omanis became tempered by the tolerance and moderation of Ibadi Islam. In addition, the coastal, seafaring Omanis also had an impact on the overall character of the nation.

By virtue of their livelihood, traders and seafarers come into contact with all sorts of people unlike themselves. Omani seafarers traded and dealt extensively with the people of Persia, eastern and interior Africa, India, the Southeast Asian islands and, as mentioned earlier, China. All of that was before they came in contact with Europeans in the 15^th century. Of course, they traded extensively with their interior, desert-dwelling compatriots as well.

In the mid-19^th century, an Omani “Indian Ocean Empire” controlled areas within present day East Africa, India, Iran and Pakistan and most of the major ports of the Indian Ocean.

Oman became an outward-looking nation early in its history by necessity. Its survival both as a people and a nation became dependent on its��abilities to interact with others. As such, familiarity with and acceptance of racial, ethnic and cultural diversities became a defining quality of Omanis. In many ways, it is integral to the national identity of Omanis I referred to earlier.

Boldly proud of their unique national identity but also an avowedly Muslim nation, Omanis accept and even embrace “the other.” That has mitigated the otherwise exclusiveness of their��rich tribal culture, which is still very observable today.

In such a cultural and social environment, it is much harder for extremism to take root. Stability and comity, as opposed to rigid adherence to an ideology, require a degree of religious as well as cultural and social tolerance.

The evolution of Saudi society has been much different. Save for the many Muslims who came from around the world on hajj to Mecca, few foreigners and even fewer non-Muslims ventured to Saudi Arabia until the early 20^th century. The geography was forbidding and the land was thought to hold little of value. In terms of foreigners, the country was left to explorers like Thesiger and a number before him.

That was until oil. With the arrival of British and then later American geologists and petroleum experts in the 1920s, Saudis saw the potential for oil in what had been thought to be a desert waste land. Those visitors and the development they eventually engendered — and the Saud’s desire to build a modern state — began Saudi Arabia’s introduction to the rest of the world.

But the country’s strict religious and tribal cultures, which reinforce one another, greatly circumscribe and restrict its social and cultural evolution. Ibn Saud astutely used the strict Wahhabism — and his many marriages to various women of different tribes — to ultimately unite the disparate tribes in the 1920s and 30s, effectively inculcating the two identities into one another. The suspicious nature of tribal culture and Wahhabism’s censure of non-Muslims and non-Wahhabi Muslims complement and buttress each other. Not surprisingly, the government today still strictly controls who and how many foreigners may visit. The suspicion of Wahhabism and the tribal culture still prevails.

Note that I am referring to different cultures and the diverse ideas and attitudes that they spawn. I am not referring to actual ethnic diversity. Both countries are predominantly Arab with small minorities of non-Arabs. But the experiences of the two societies in terms of exposure to and acceptance of other cultures are very different.

The historic absence of human interaction and cultural exposure until very recently may account in part for some of the challenges that Saudi Arabia as a nation and Saudis as a people have faced in accommodating themselves with the outside world and even with many within the kingdom’s own borders. Addressing that challenge manifests itself in both positive and negative ways, including extremism.

The Key: Tolerance

The final and critical defining difference is the two countries’ approaches to tolerance.

Because Omanis practice a more tolerant form of Islam, Ibadism, other religious faiths — both Muslim and non-Muslim — are accepted in the country. Shiite and Sunni mosques and even Christian churches and Hindu temples all exist in the country; although the activities of the latter are somewhat circumscribed, especially in the area of proselytizing.

In my own experience in Oman, I sensed that Omanis identified themselves with their country, its history and culture, and their tribe as opposed to their religious sect. The sultan, in particular, has been careful to avoid singling out any specific Muslim sect when speaking of the unity of the nation and has purposely cultivated a policy of tolerance, for example, by including Sunni and Shiite in various government posts and donating land for the construction of Christian and Hindu places of worship.

Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia explicitly prohibits public worship within any faith but Wahhabi Islam. Saudi Shiite, for example, who number between 1.5-2 million, must worship in informal mosques known as hussenias. There are no formal Shiite mosques. Nor are there Christian churches for the estimated 1.5 million Christian foreign workers living in the kingdom. Private services are permitted in foreign embassies and may also take place in private homes, as long as the Saudi religious police — the deservedly maligned mutawa or mutaween, formally known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice — are ignorant of them. The very existence of such an organization begs the question of tolerance.

Saudi police, for example, carefully monitor foreigners who enter the few embassies that offer religious services. To be sure, there is a necessary security element to their presence; Christians in Saudi Arabia face risks by going to worship. But the police are also there to ensure that no Saudi enters to attend such services. Furthermore, anyone attempting to conduct a private religious service of more than a handful of worshippers in his/her home, for example, would be arrested and, in all likelihood, deported or imprisoned.

In Oman, by contrast, Omani police direct traffic outside massively attended religious services on special occasions such as Christmas and Easter — much, in fact, as police do in the US for larger places of worship. The same is done for Hindu special religious holidays. Omanis are free to attend such non-Muslim services, though few actually do.

In short, religious tolerance is accepted by the majority of Omanis and formally promulgated by its government and the sultan. It is not in Saudi Arabia.

The late tried to promote greater understanding of the “other,” as non-Sunni Muslims are sometimes referred to. But in the current tense religious environment in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Middle East, there has been limited progress to my knowledge. His efforts, for example, to reach out to the country’s Shiite population, were thwarted by the perceived growing threat from Shiite-dominant Iran, especially after the election of the controversial and outspoken Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president in 2005.

With the recent death of King Abdullah and the assumption of the throne by his half-brother, Salman, it is impossible to predict in which direction the country might turn. King Salman has been viewed as largely pro-Western and supportive of the kingdom’s efforts to play a more prominent role on the global stage and burnish its image abroad. But when he was governor of Riyadh, he was also generally viewed as the family enforcer — the one responsible for keeping the many members of the royal family in line. One thing is clear: If the country is to set itself on a path of greater tolerance, the new king must lead it.

His course will not be easy. The institutional and cultural obstacles to tolerance are still great. Religious dogma and the unwritten alliance between his ruling family and the religious establishment effectively inhibit the country’s political leadership from modifying in any significant way its religious practices.

Unchangeable Circumstances of History

National identity, social and cultural roots, and tolerance form the basis, therefore, for the differing experiences of these two nations of the Arabian Peninsula. They are part of the countries and the peoples who populate them. They are circumstances of each country’s history, geography and development.

We cannot change them. However, what is possible, especially in the case of Saudi Arabia, is that leaders can influence significantly the policies of government as well as attitudes of the people. We have seen that in Oman. The Saudis will have to do so in their own way, however. It will have to be an approach that takes into account their unique history, culture and religious faith.

Outsiders, especially other Muslims and Muslim nations, can be helpful. But��the change that is necessary will have to be organic. Outsiders are most helpful when they quietly but firmly encourage and support change from within and provide assistance when it is requested.

There may also be times when a problem appears so overwhelming that external initiative may be necessary. I am thinking of the centuries-old tensions between Sunni and Shiite, which are often manipulated by opportunists for political advantage. We see that today in Syria and Iraq or even between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In fact, promoting and advancing greater tolerance of and respect between Sunni and Shiite among all Muslims may be a good place to start. Oman may be a good example of how to go about such change.

Ultimately, all governments must be held accountable. That includes governments, officials and organizations whose policies and behavior fall short of the actions necessary to end extremism and the violence it promotes.

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