Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 23:01:52 +1000
From: saeed urrehman <think-AT-riseup.net>
Subject: letter to a young muslim by tariq ali



Letter to a young Muslim

Although he was tutored in Islam as a child, Tariq Ali, long-time activist,
author and broadcaster, has always been a non-believer. In this open
letter, he recognises the anger and disillusion of young Muslims, but
argues it is no answer to turn to the religious fundamentalism of Osama bin
Laden

Saturday April 13, 2002
The Guardian

Dear friend
Remember when you approached me after the big antiwar meeting in November
2001 (I think it was Glasgow) and asked whether I was a believer? I have
not forgotten the shock you registered when I replied "no", or the comment
of your friend ("our parents warned us against you"), or the angry
questions which the pair of you then began to hurl at me like darts. All of
that made me think, and this is my reply for you and all the others like
you who asked similar questions elsewhere in Europe and North America.
When we spoke, I told you that my criticism of religion and those who use
it for political ends was not a case of being diplomatic in public.
Exploiters and manipulators have always used religion self-righteously to
further their own selfish ends. It's true that this is not the whole story.
There are, of course, deeply sincere people of religion in different parts
of the world who genuinely fight on the side of the poor, but they are
usually in conflict with organised religion themselves.
The Catholic Church victimised worker or peasant priests who organised
against oppression. The Iranian ayatollahs dealt severely with Muslims who
preached in favour of a social radicalism. If I genuinely believed that
this radical Islam was the way forward for humanity, I would not hesitate
to say so in public, whatever the consequences. I know that many of your
friends love chanting the name "Osama" and I know that they cheered on
September 11, 2001. They were not alone. It happened all over the world,
but had nothing to do with religion. I know of Argentine students who
walked out when a teacher criticised Osama. I know a Russian teenager who
emailed a one-word message - "Congratulations" - to his Russian friends
whose parents had settled outside New York, and they replied: "Thanks. It
was great." We talked, I remember, of the Greek crowds at football matches
who refused to mourn for the two minutes the government had imposed and
instead broke the silence with anti-American chants.
But none of this justifies what took place. What lies behind the vicarious
pleasure is not a feeling of strength, but a terrible weakness. The people
of Indo-China suffered more than any Muslim country at the hands of the US
government. They were bombed for 15 whole years and lost millions of their
people. Did they even think of bombing America? Nor did the Cubans or the
Chileans or the Brazilians. The last two fought against the US-imposed
military regimes at home and finally triumphed.
Today, people feel powerless. And so when America is hit they celebrate.
They don't ask what such an act will achieve, what its consequences will be
and who will benefit. Their response, like the event itself, is purely
symbolic.
I think that Osama and his group have reached a political dead-end. It was
a grand spectacle, but nothing more. The US, in responding with a war, has
enhanced the importance of the action, but I doubt if even that will rescue
it from obscurity in the future. It will be a footnote in the history of
this century. In political, economic or military terms it was barely a
pinprick.
What do the Islamists offer? A route to a past which, mercifully for the
people of the seventh century, never existed. If the "Emirate of
Afghanistan" is the model for what they want to impose on the world then
the bulk of Muslims would rise up in arms against them. Don't imagine that
either Osama or Mullah Omar represent the future of Islam. It would be a
major disaster for the culture we both share if that turned out to be the
case. Would you want to live under those conditions? Would you tolerate
your sister, your mother or the woman you love being hidden from public
view and only allowed out shrouded like a corpse?
I want to be honest with you. I opposed this latest Afghan war. I do not
accept the right of big powers to change governments as and when it affects
their interests. But I did not shed any tears for the Taliban as they
shaved their beards and ran back home. This does not mean that those who
have been captured should be treated like animals or denied their
elementary rights according to the Geneva convention, but as I've argued
elsewhere, the fundamentalism of the American Empire has no equal today.
They can disregard all conventions and laws at will. The reason they are
openly mistreating prisoners they captured after waging an illegal war in
Afghanistan is to assert their power before the world - hence they
humiliate Cuba by doing their dirty work on its soil - and warn others who
attempt to twist the lion's tail that the punishment will be severe.
I remember how, during the cold war, the CIA and its indigenous recruits
tortured political prisoners and raped them in many parts of Latin America.
During the Vietnam war the US violated most of the Geneva conventions. They
tortured and executed prisoners, raped women, threw prisoners out of
helicopters to die on the ground or drown in the sea, and all this, of
course, in the name of freedom.
Because many people in the west believe the nonsense about "humanitarian
interventions", they are shocked by these acts, but this is relatively mild
compared with the crimes committed in the last century by the Empire. I've
met many of our people in different parts of the world since September 11.
One question is always repeated: "Do you think we Muslims are clever enough
to have done this?" I always answer "Yes". Then I ask who they think is
responsible, and the answer is invariably "Israel". Why? "To discredit us
and make the Americans attack our countries." I gently expose their wishful
illusions, but the conversation saddens me. Why are so many Muslims sunk in
this torpor? Why do they wallow in so much self-pity? Why is their sky
always overcast? Why is it always someone else who is to blame?
Sometimes when we talk I get the impression that there is not a single
Muslim country of which they can feel really proud. Those who have migrated
from South Asia are much better treated in Britain than in Saudi Arabia or
the Gulf States. It is here that something has to happen. The Arab world is
desperate for a change. Over the years, in every discussion with Iraqis,
Syrians, Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians and Palestinians, the same questions
are raised, the same problems recur. We are suffocating. Why can't we
breathe? Everything seems static: our economy, our politics, our
intellectuals and, most of all, our religion.
Palestine suffers every day. The west does nothing. Our governments are
dead. Our politicians are corrupt. Our people are ignored. Is it surprising
that some are responsive to the Islamists? Who else offers anything these
days? The US? It doesn't even want democracy, not even in little Qatar, and
for a very simple reason. If we elected our own governments they might
demand that the US close down its bases. Would it? They already resent
al-Jazeera television because it has different priorities from them. It was
fine when al-Jazeera attacked corruption within the Arab elite. Thomas
Friedman even devoted a whole column to praise of al-Jazeera in the New
York Times. He saw it as a sign of democracy coming to the Arab world. No
longer. Because democracy means the right to think differently, and
al-Jazeera showed pictures of the Afghan war that were not shown on the US
networks, so Bush and Blair put pressure on Qatar to stop unfriendly
broadcasts.
For the west, democracy means believing in exactly the same things that
they believe. Is that really democracy? If we elected our own government,
in one or two countries people might elect Islamists. Would the west leave
us alone? Did the French government leave the Algerian military alone? No.
They insisted that the elections of 1990 and 1991 be declared null and
void. French intellectuals described the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) as
"Islamo-fascists", ignoring the fact that they had won an election. Had
they been allowed to become the government, divisions already present
within them would have come to the surface. The army could have warned that
any attempt to tamper with the rights guaranteed to citizens under the
constitution would not be tolerated. It was only when the original leaders
of the FIS had been eliminated that the more lumpen elements came to the
fore and created mayhem. Should we blame them for the civil war, or those
in Algiers and Paris who robbed them of their victory? The massacres in
Algeria are horrendous. Is it only the Islamists who are responsible? What
happened in Bentalha, 10 miles south of Algiers, on the night of September
22, 1997? Who slaughtered the 500 men, women and children of that township?
Who? The Frenchman who knows everything, Bernard-Henri Lévy, is sure it was
the Islamists who perpetrated this dreadful deed. Then why did the army
deny the local population arms to defend itself? Why did it tell the local
militia to go away that night? Why did the security forces not intervene
when they could see what was going on? Why does M Lévy believe that the
Maghreb has to be subordinated to the needs of the French republic, and why
does nobody attack this sort of fundamentalism?
We know what we have to do, say the Arabs, but every time the west
intervenes it sets our cause back many years. So if they want to help, they
should stay out. That's what my Arab friends say, and I agree with this
approach. Look at Iran. The western gaze turned benevolent during the
assault on Afghanistan. Iran was needed for the war, but let the west watch
from afar. The imperial fundamentalists are talking about the "axis of
evil", which includes Iran. An intervention there would be fatal. A new
generation has experienced clerical oppression. It has known nothing else.
Stories about the shah are part of its prehistory. These young men and
women are sure about one thing if nothing else. They don't want the
ayatollahs to rule them any more. Even though Iran, in recent years, has
not been as bad as Saudi Arabia or the late "Emirate of Afghanistan", it
has not been good for the people.
Let me tell you a story. A couple of years ago I met a young Iranian
film-maker in Los Angeles. His name was Moslem Mansouri. He had managed to
escape with several hours of filmed interviews for a documentary he was
making. He had won the confidence of three Tehran prostitutes and filmed
them for more than two years. He showed me some of the footage. They talked
to him quite openly. They described how the best pick-ups were at religious
festivals. I got a flavour of the film from the transcripts he sent me. One
of the women tells him: "Today everyone is forced to sell their bodies!
Women like us have to tolerate a man for 10,000 toomans. Young people need
to be in a bed together, even for 10 minutes . . . It is a primary need . .
. it calms them down.
"When the government does not allow it, then prostitution grows. We don't
even need to talk about prostitution, the government has taken away the
right to speak with the opposite sex freely in public . . . In the parks,
in the cinemas, or in the streets, you can't talk to the person sitting
next to you. On the streets, if you talk to a man, the 'Islamic guard'
interrogates you endlessly. Today in our country, nobody is satisfied!
Nobody has security. I went to a company to get a job. The manager of the
company, a bearded guy, looked at my face and said, 'I will hire you and
I'll give you 10,000 toomans more than the pay rate.' I said, 'You can at
least test my computer skills to see if I'm proficient or not . . .' He
said, 'I hire you for your looks!' I knew that if I had to work there, I
had to have sex with him at least once a day.
"Wherever you go it's like this! I went to a special family court - for
divorce - and begged the judge, a clergyman, to give me my child's custody.
I told him, 'Please . . . I beg you to give me the custody of my child.
I'll be your Kaniz . . . ["Kaniz" means servant. This is a Persian
expression which basically means 'I beg you, I am very desperate'.] What do
you think the guy said? He said, 'I don't need a servant! I need a woman!'
What do you expect of others when the clergyman, the head of the court,
says this? I went to the officer to get my divorce signed, instead he said
I should not get divorced and instead get married again without divorce,
illegally. Because he said without a husband it will be hard to find a job.
He was right, but I didn't have money to pay him . . . These things make
you age faster . . . you get depressed . . . you have a lot of stress and
it damages you. Perhaps there is a means to get out of this . . . "
Moslem was distraught because none of the American networks wanted to buy
the film. They didn't want to destabilise Khatami's regime! Moslem himself
is a child of the Revolution. Without it he would never have become a
film-maker. He comes from a very poor family. His father is a muezzin and
his upbringing was ultra-religious. Now he hates religion. He refused to
fight in the war against Iraq. He was arrested. This experience transformed
him. "The prison was a hard but good experience for me. It was in the
prison that I felt I am reaching a stage of intellectual maturity. I was
resisting and I enjoyed my sense of strength. I felt that I saved my life
from the corrupted world of clergies and this is a price I was paying for
it. I was proud of it. After one year in prison, they told me that I would
be released on the condition that I sign papers stating that I will
participate in Friday sermons and religious activities. I refused to sign.
They kept me in the prison for one more year."
Afterwards he took a job on a film magazine as a reporter. "I thought my
work in the media would serve as a cover for my own projects, which were to
document the hideous crimes of the political regime itself. I knew that I
would not be able to make the kind of films I really want to make due to
the censorship regulations. Any scenario that I would write would have
never got the permission of the Islamic censorship office. I knew that my
time and energy would get wasted. So I decided to make eight documentaries
secretly. I smuggled the footage out of Iran. Due to financial problems
I've only been able to finish editing two of my films. One is Close Up,
Long Shot and the other is Shamloo, The Poet Of Liberty.
"The first film is about the life of Hossein Sabzian, who was the main
character of Abbas Kiarostami's drama-documentary called Close Up. A few
years after Kiarostami's film, I went to visit Sabzian. He loves cinema.
His wife and children get frustrated with him and finally leave him. Today,
he lives in a village on the outskirts of Tehran and has come to the
conclusion that his love for cinema has resulted in nothing but misery. In
my film he says, 'People like me get destroyed in societies like the one we
live in. We can never present ourselves. There are two types of dead: flat
and walking. We are the walking dead!'"
We could find stories like this and worse in every Muslim country. There is
a big difference between the Muslims of the diaspora - those whose parents
migrated to the western lands - and those who still live in the House of
Islam. The latter are far more critical because religion is not crucial to
their identity. It's taken for granted that they are Muslims. In Europe and
North America things are different. Here an official multiculturalism has
stressed difference at the expense of all else. Its rise correlates with a
decline in radical politics as such.
"Culture" and "religion" are softer, euphemistic substitutes for
socioeconomic inequality - as if diversity, rather than hierarchy, were the
central issue in North American or European society today. I have spoken to
Muslims from the Maghreb (France), from Anatolia (Germany); from Pakistan
and Bangladesh (Britain), from everywhere (United States) and a South Asian
sprinkling in Scandinavia. Why is it, I often ask myself, that so many are
like you? They have become much more orthodox and rigid than the robust and
vigorous peasants of Kashmir and the Punjab, whom I used to know so well.
The British prime minister is a great believer in single-faith schools. The
American president ends each speech with "God Save America". Osama starts
and ends each TV interview by praising Allah. All three have the right to
do so, just as I have the right to remain committed to most of the values
of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment attacked religion - Christianity,
mainly - for two reasons: that it was a set of ideological delusions, and
that it was a system of institutional oppression, with immense powers of
persecution and intolerance. Why should we abandon either of these legacies
today?
I don't want you to misunderstand me. My aversion to religion is by no
means confined to Islam alone. And nor do I ignore the role which religious
ideologies have played in the past in order to move the world forward. It
was the ideological clashes between two rival interpretations of
Christianity - the Protestant Reformation versus the Catholic
Counter-Reformation - that led to volcanic explosions in Europe. Here was
an example of razor-sharp intellectual debates fuelled by theological
passions, leading to a civil war, followed by a revolution.
The 16th-century Dutch revolt against Spanish occupation was triggered off
by an assault on sacred images in the name of confessional correctness. The
introduction of a new prayer book in Scotland was one of the causes of the
17th-century Puritan Revolution in England, the refusal to tolerate
Catholicism sparked off its successor in 1688. The intellectual ferment did
not cease and a century later the ideas of the Enlightenment stoked the
furnaces of revolutionary France. The Church of England and the Vatican now
combined to contest the new threat, but ideas of popular sovereignty and
republics were too strong to be easily obliterated.
I can almost hear your question. What has all this got to do with us? A
great deal, my friend. Western Europe had been fired by theological
passions, but these were now being transcended. Modernity was on the
horizon. This was a dynamic that the culture and economy of the Ottoman
Empire could never mimic. The Sunni-Shia divide had come too soon and
congealed into rival dogmas. Dissent had, by this time, been virtually
wiped out in Islam. The Sultan, flanked by his religious scholars, ruled a
state-Empire that was going to wither away and die.
If this was already the case in the 18th century, how much truer it is
today. Perhaps the only way in which Muslims will discover this is through
their own experiences, as in Iran. The rise of religion is partially
explained by the lack of any other alternative to the universal regime of
neoliberalism. Here you will discover that as long as Islamist governments
open their countries to global penetration, they will be permitted to do
what they want in the sociopolitical realm.
The American Empire used Islam before and it can do so again. Here lies the
challenge. We are in desperate need of an Islamic Reformation that sweeps
away the crazed conservatism and backwardness of the fundamentalists but,
more than that, opens up the world of Islam to new ideas which are seen to
be more advanced than what is currently on offer from the west.
This would necessitate a rigid separation of state and mosque; the
dissolution of the clergy; the assertion by Muslim intellectuals of their
right to interpret the texts that are the collective property of Islamic
culture as a whole; the freedom to think freely and rationally and the
freedom of imagination. Unless we move in this direction we will be doomed
to reliving old battles and thinking not of a richer and humane future, but
of how we can move from the present to the past. It is an unacceptable
vision. I've let my pen run away with me and preached my heresies for too
long. I doubt that I will change, but I hope you will
* This article is extracted from The Clash Of Fundamentalisms: Crusades,
Jihads And Modernity, by Tariq Ali, published by Verso at =A315. To order a
copy for =A313 (plus p&p), call the Guardian book service on 0870 066 7979




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