The over-simple depiction of Islam's relations with the West as a 'clash of civilisations' serves extremists on both sides, writes Mary Fitzgerald
The elderly woman put down her walking stick and stood unsteadily in front of the tomb railing, raising her gnarled arthritic hands in supplication. Dressed in a simple headscarf and housecoat, she had travelled to the Turkish city of Konya to pay her respects at the grave of Jalal al-Din Rumi, the 13th century Muslim jurist and theologian whose mystical poetry is known and loved from east to west.
Eyes shut and lips moving silently, she prayed in memory of the man whose interpretation of Islam has inspired millions worldwide. Behind her, framed on a board, were some of Rumi's most famous lines translated into several languages. "Come, come, whoever you are/ Wanderer, idolator, worshipper of fire/Even if you have broken your vows a thousand times/Come, and come yet again/Ours is not a caravan of despair/ Ours is the gate of hope."
A week after watching pilgrims gather at the shrine, I listened to a self-proclaimed jihadi as he praised ibn Taymiya, another medieval Muslim jurist whose teachings could not be more different from those espoused by Rumi.
With his rigid and austere rendering of Islam, ibn Taymiya is something of a favourite among Islamic militants and it was his writings that inspired this young Muslim to fight in Chechnya and Afghanistan.
Talking to me from one side of the partition he insisted I sat behind, the jihadi spoke of his dreams of a global caliphate or Islamic state.
In the event of this happening, he informed me matter-of-factly, I would be held captive unless my menfolk paid the jizya (a poll tax historically levied on non-Muslims).
There is little room for the inclusivity of Rumi's teachings in the jihadi's worldview. In his eyes, there is only one Islam and that is the uncompromisingly spare version he adheres to. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he is a fully paid-up subscriber to the view that there is a "clash of civilisations" between his faith and the West.
The Pope's recent controversial comments on Islam were to be welcomed, he said, because they drove that wedge further.
Two Muslims, two very different interpretations of Islam. Between the two fall countless others that challenge the view that Islam constitutes a monolithic whole, one that is inevitably at odds with the rest of the world. The 1.4 billion people that make up the global population of Muslims have many different approaches to their faith.
There are those who are born Muslim and piously observe codes of worship and behaviour; those who are born into the faith but do not practise it much beyond family occasions and holidays; those who extend their understanding of Islam to include a political philosophy; and the growing body of Muslim converts from all kinds of backgrounds.
Add the different Sunni and Shia schools, the myriad of local cultural practices, traditions and histories that have shaped Islam in different part of the world, and the sheer geographical spread of the religion, and it becomes more difficult to speak of a homogeneous entity, least of all one engaged in a "clash of civilisations".
But the notion of conflict persists - both in the West and the Islamic world. Talking to Muslims in the Middle East, south Asia, Turkey and Europe in the last four months, it becomes clear that, at some level, most feel their beliefs are under attack from those quick to judge an entire faith on the actions of a violent obscurantist minority.
The millions of ordinary Muslims for whom Islam is about self-improvement, propriety, tolerance and finding a peaceful reconciliation between ancient tenets and modern life, find themselves battling not only militant fundamentalists within their own communities, but increasing animosity towards their religion as a whole.
There are extremists on both sides, many Muslims I interviewed pointed out, referring to the kind of hostility exemplified in some of the e-mails I received from readers. "This is not a religion," one of the more provocative e-mails read. "This is a cult with one billion devils."
A global survey published earlier this year makes for sobering reading. Interviewing 14,000 people in 13 countries, pollsters from the Washington-based Pew Research Centre found evidence of deep mutual suspicion and antipathy between Muslims and westerners. Majorities in the US and countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East described relations between Muslims and the West as generally bad, the poll showed. Muslims broadly blamed the West for deteriorating relations, while westerners were likely to blame Muslims, according to the findings.
In all of the countries with predominantly Muslim populations, respondents tended to view westerners as greedy, arrogant, immoral, selfish and violent.
Muslims in western Europe, however, expressed more positive views, with most living in France, Germany and Spain viewing westerners as generous, honest, tolerant and respectful of women. Interestingly, Muslim attitudes in Britain leant towards the negative, tending to chime more with those expressed in the Middle East and Asia than elsewhere in Europe.
On the other hand, many westerners viewed Muslims as intolerant, and majorities in five of the eight non-Muslim countries surveyed associated Muslims with being fanatical and violent.
Terrorist attacks carried out by Islamic militants since 9/11 have caused many to equate Islam with violence. This week a BBC Northern Ireland presenter confessed in a documentary on racism that his gut reaction when watching Muslims pray for the first time was not positive.
Hearing them say Allahu Akbar [ God is most great] made him think of Osama bin Laden and terrorism, he admitted.
The Pew survey, carried out in April and May, was undoubtedly heavily swayed by events of the previous year, including the London bombings, the uproar over the Danish cartoons and worsening violence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's tempting to wonder what a similar survey would reveal now, given that the intervening months have given us the crisis in Lebanon, Pope Benedict XVI's citing of a 14th century emperor who described Islam as "evil and inhuman" and various other tensions, including the increasingly shrill debate over Muslim integration in Britain.
Many fear a further hardening of attitudes among Muslims and non-Muslims, something the extremists would consider a boon, says Yahya Birt, from the Leicester-based Islamic Foundation. "I'm more pessimistic now than I was a year ago," Birt, a Briton who converted to Islam 16 years ago, admits. "It is very worrying to see how the debates have become cruder rather than more sophisticated. Various issues are being collapsed together into what appears to be a kind of cultural panic."
Like many Muslims, he deplores the "us versus them" tone of much of the interaction between Islam and the West, pointing out that complexities and nuances are often ignored by hardliners determined to link everything to a "clash of civilisations".
The ongoing veil controversy in Britain is a case in point. In their rush to take positions, many overlooked the fact that the debate over whether women should cover their faces is a long-running one in several Muslim countries. In Egypt for example, several universities ban the niqab [ full-face veil] for security reasons. In some Muslim nations, the niqab is often perceived as a recent import associated with more puritan forms of Islam such as Saudi-influenced Wahhabism.
The relationship between Islam and democracy is another issue where extremists on both sides drown out real debate. Critics insist Islam is simply incompatible with democracy, drawing on examples of Islamic governments in Sudan, Iran and Afghanistan during the Taliban regime.
Many Islamic radicals are only too happy to agree. But it is perhaps more instructive to look at countries like Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, and Mali - both democratic - or Turkey where a ruling party with Islamist roots has instigated sweeping reforms within the democratic system.
I met many Muslims who, while critical of issues of morality in the West, believe that western democracies are more Islamic in their organisation and structure than many Muslim societies. They never fail to point out, however, the irony that several of these Muslim countries are chafing under corrupt regimes supported by western governments.
In Pakistan, Imran Khan, the former cricketer, told me he thought Sweden, because of its systems of welfare and governance, was the nearest thing to an ideal Islamic society in the world today.
The Muslim world contains many examples of those who defy easy categorisation and those who strive for an interpretation of Islam that is both authentic and modern. In Egypt the reformist brother of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, told me why he believes hijab is not a religious obligation for women. An Egyptian Christian who helped found a moderate Islamist political party explained why he identifies more with his country's Islamic heritage.
In Pakistan, I met activists who challenge the idea that Sharia law is an immutable body of divinely ordained codes, echoing Muslim reformers in Europe and the US.
Many Muslims in Turkey see themselves as a vanguard for moderate Islam: in a little-noticed move some months ago, religious authorities there deleted misogynistic statements from publications containing the hadith, a collection of sayings and deeds attributed, with varying veracity, to the Prophet Muhammad.
What these and other voices share is the desire to forge a genuine expression of faith that advocates neither a neglect of the divine nor bigotry, injustice and violence in its name.
The challenge now is to reclaim the debate from reactionaries on both sides. The exchanges between Islamic extremists, who encourage the view that the West is inherently anti-Muslim, and those whose bone is with Islam itself, cannot move beyond what has become a hopeless dialogue of the deaf, reinforcing prejudices on both sides and obscuring real issues.
The recent case of the French philosophy teacher forced into hiding after publishing a newspaper article critical of Islam is an example.
He wrote about integration issues that most agree need to be discussed but chose to lace his argument with statements declaring the Prophet Muhammad a "pitiless warlord", a "master of hate" and the Koran "a book of extraordinary violence". The article and the threats of violence it provoked played right into the hands of those who ply the "clash of civilisations" theory from both perspectives.
"The danger now is the emergence of a hardened wing on either side which could grow and grow until the middle ground gets squeezed out and becomes ineffective," says Yahya Birt. "Extremists will exploit and work within that polarisation."
In such a climate, perhaps it would be well to remember that while the extremists have one rigid and all-encompassing ideology, there are many faces of Islam.
maryfitzgerald@irish-times.ie
Series concluded.
Mary Fitzgerald is the first winner of the Irish Times Douglas Gageby Fellowship. Her complete series on "The Faces of Islam" can be seen on the Irish Times website at www.ireland.com/focus/gageby.