Apr. 16, 1979
The World of Islam
 "We Muslims are one family even though we live under different governments and in various regions."
�Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of Iran's revolution
"The real force of Islam is the feeling that you belong to a brotherhood with the obligation to serve that brotherhood and thereby serve God."
�Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi Minister of Petroleum
"Islam judges, Islam protects, Islam urges resistance when there is injustice."
�Anwar Gamall, Egyptian university student
Those are only a few of the voices of Islam, as powerful and compelling today as the muezzin's ancient call of the faithful to prayer. The voices speak Russian and Chinese, Persian and French, Berber and Malay, Turkish and Urdu�and Arabic, of course, the mother tongue of the Prophet Muhammad and language of Islam's holy book, the Koran. Islam is the world's youngest universal faith, and the second largest, with 750 million adherents, to about 985 million for Christianity. Across the eastern hemisphere, but primarily in that strategic crescent that straddles the crossroads of three continents, Muslims are rediscovering their spiritual roots and reasserting the political power of the Islamic way of life. Repelled by the bitter fruits of modernization and fired by a zealous pride in its ancient heritage, the umma (world community) of Islam is stirring with revival.
Iran is the most telling example. Late last month millions of men and women went to the polls for a referendum in which they voted overwhelmingly in favor of an Islamic republic. The affirmative vote created the nation's first "government of God," declared the Ayatullah Khomeini. The monarchy will be replaced by a democratic system with an elected legislature; religious leaders will probably have some kind of veto power over prospective laws. The success of the yearlong Iranian revolution, which ousted a dynastic autocrat who dreamed of turning his country into a Western-style industrial and secular state, was hailed as "a new dawn for the Islamic people," in the words of one Kuwait newspaper. Palestinian fedayeen poured into the streets of Beirut to celebrate the victory by firing AK-47s into the air. In the Sudan, militant Muslims opposed to their government's alignment with Egypt held an Islamic victory parade, shouting, "Down with Sadat, friend of the Shah!" Proclaimed Cairo's conservative Muslim magazine Al Da'wah (The Call): "The Muslims are coming, despite Jewish cunning, Christian hatred and the Communist storm."
Iran is not the only country where the power and zeal of a revivified Islam is being felt. Earlier this year Pakistan added measures from the Shari'a�the Islamic code of justice based primarily on the Koran�to its criminal and civil laws. In Kuwait, a revised version of the Shari'a is being adopted in the legal code of that oil-rich desert state. Responding to a groundswell of Muslim fundamentalism, Egypt's People's Assembly is also debating the imposition of the Shari'a, which could close down the bars, nightclubs and gambling casinos that glitter along Cairo's Pyramid Road.
Perhaps the most reliable barometer of Islam's revival is observance of the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that devout Muslims are expected to make at least once in their lifetime. Participation has been growing steadily since 1974. Last November's pilgrimage was the biggest in history. Nearly 2 million people converged on the arid Plain of Arafat near Mecca to live in tents and perform the arduous five-to seven-day ritual that has remained unchanged for 14 centuries. More than ever before, the pilgrimage was a spiritual kaleidoscope of races and faces and languages from 70 countries, from the wealthiest of oil sheiks to the poorest of the poor.
The renewed interest in Islam is most pronounced among the young. A prominent judge in Algiers is surprised to discover that five times a day his 14-year-old son joins a group of friends at a mosque for prayer. In Tunisia, whose President Habib Bourguiba has promoted equal rights for women, including divorce and abortion, students belonging to the militant Muslim Brothers wage war on "sin and evil" by painting over sexually suggestive cinema billboards and chalking quotations from the Koran on city walls. At Cairo University (enrollment: 130,000), hundreds of female Egyptian students have donned the veil and demanded classes separate from male students.
Islam has managed to survive, if not flourish, in the Communist world. The Soviet Union is now home to the world's fifth largest Muslim population (after Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). Officials in Moscow are notably fearful that the currents of fervor sweeping Iran might cross the border and infect the Islamic populations of Azerbaijan, Turkmen and other republics on the Soviet Union's southern tier. More than half of the estimated 11 million people in China's huge western province of Xinjiang (Sinkiang) are Muslim; a heavy propaganda campaign against the "opiate of the masses" has failed to prevent the faithful from performing their daily rituals of prayer in private, away from the watchful eyes of Communist cadres. On the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza, and even among Israel's own Muslim citizens, there has been an upsurge in attendance at mosques and a renewed interest in Islam. Observes Ran Israeli, a lecturer in Islamic civilization at Jerusalem's Hebrew University: "There's a new sense of exhilaration and self-confidence among Muslims. Islam has, after all, become a great success story."
The revival of Islam has been gathering force for more than a decade. Islam is no Friday-go-to-mosque kind of religion. It is a code of honor, a system of law and an all-encompassing way of life. To be sure, religious observance varies somewhat from country to country and person to person. Nonetheless, to the average Muslim, his faith is much more in evidence in everyday life than is Christianity to people in most Western lands. On Fridays, the Muslim sabbath, life comes to a halt in the factories, the marketplaces and the public squares. Men assemble their prayer rugs near an amplified sound system if there is no time or inclination to go inside a mosque; women frequently pray at home. Others perform the required ablutions and pray wherever they happen to be. A tennis pro in white shorts will place his racquet alongside the court at the sports club and say his prayers. An airline steward will spread out a towel in the corridor of a plane to pray. Workers in the fields will remove their boots at noon and kneel on pieces of cardboard. Mahmoud Hassan Sharaf, 76, a Bedouin who lives on the edge of the Sahara, explains the peace he finds in prayer: "If I don't pray my heart is angry. When I pray my heart is still."
Everyday language contains countless reminders of Islam's basic belief that nothing on earth happens without God's will. Tell a Cairo taxi driver where you want to go, and he will answer "Inshallah " (If God wills). If a housewife finds tomatoes in the market, she may mutter "Al-hamdu lillah " (Praise be to God). The fellah in the Nile Delta will whisper "Bismillah" (In the name of God) as he sows his field. Egypt's President Anwar Sadat took a statesmanlike risk in making his historic trip to Jerusalem. Yet, as a devout Muslim, he knew that no mere man could control the outcome. Over and over he has said privately, "This is my fate, and I accept my fate, whatever the outcome."
"Nothing is profane to this very proximate God whose hand is everywhere," writes Arabist Peter A. Iseman. "Men's accidents are God's purposes, and All is Divine Plan. One of the more striking aspects of the Arabians is that doubt, inner guilt, anxiety are alien to them. Their world is more reassuring, pervaded as it is with a soothing sense of inevitability."
Much of Islam's resurgence can be seen as a quest for stability and roots, inspired by a disdain for Western values and for a kind of modernization that exacerbated economic and social problems in many Third World nations. Health clinics cut down on disease, but they also aggravated the population explosion in those Islamic nations where birth control is little practiced. Rapid growth of industry in cities provided jobs, but it also disrupted the sacrosanct family structure in villages as men streamed into cities in search of work.
Anwar Gamall, a senior at Cairo University, wonders why Egyptian television is clogged with American serials like Charlie's Angels and Police Woman. "What relevance do they have to life in Egypt?" he asks. "What are Muslims supposed to do? Emulate those lifestyles? Forget Islam and become a plastic person?" Nadia Fatim, a student at the same university, wears a modified veil and a floor-length robe. Says she: "It is a matter of identity. If you dress and behave Western, then you are compelled to be Western. But if you give yourself to Islam and its way and its dress and thought, then nothing can pressure you away from what you truly are. Islam gives you yourself."
Marvin Zonis, a specialist on Iran at the University of Chicago, observes that in Iran and elsewhere, "Islam is being used as a vehicle for striking back at the West, in the sense of people trying to reclaim a very greatly damaged sense of selfesteem. They feel that for the past 150 years the West has totally overpowered them culturally, and in the process their own institutions and way of life have become second rate." Says John Duke Anthony, a Middle East expert in Washington: "We are witnessing a reformation. Within the Islamic world, there is a sense that changes can be made so as to allow Islamic nations to adapt to the pressures of the latter part of this century."
Muslims can survive well enough as minorities, as they do in Britain, for example, where a huge new mosque facing Regent's Park in London stands as a symbol of a growing community, now a million strong. Yet Islam itself has had a dynamic manifest destiny; in a sense, it is a political faith with a yearning for expansion. Less than a hundred years after the death of Muhammad in A.D. 632, his followers had burst out of the Arabian desert to conquer and create an empire whose glories were to shine for a thousand years. A cavalry of God, they conquered the Persian Empire and much of the Byzantine, spreading the faith through Northern Africa into Spain, and through the Middle East to the Indus River. From there, devout Arab traders later carried their faith to Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines. Other traders introduced the Koran to black tribes of Africa that lived south of the Sahara Desert.
Later Islam fought successfully to preserve its ideological integrity in the face of Mongol invaders, Western Crusaders and, more recently, Western imperialists. But by the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire had been dismembered and large portions of it brought under the domination of the colonizing nations of Christian Europe. European rule demonstrated how important it was for Islam to exercise temporal as well as spiritual power. At its nadir, in all the Arab world, only Yemen and Saudi Arabia, poor and backward, were nominally independent. Iran, Afghanistan and secularized Turkey, where Kemal Ataturk had disestablished Islam as his country's official religion in an effort to forge a stable and progressive nation, were free. But elsewhere�on the Indian subcontinent, in Southeast Asia, in Africa and the Pacific�millions of Muslims were under colonial rule.
The resurgence of the Islamic world began with the end of World War II, when the war-weary European powers saw their colonial empires collapse one by one. Strong nationalist leaders who were also Muslims, like Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, rose to power; by the early '60s there was a belt of independent, predominantly Islamic states stretching from Morocco to Indonesia. For Muslims of the Middle East, one event in the past decade stands out as a modern landmark in the history of the faith. On the afternoon of Oct. 6, 1973, the cry of "Allahu Akbar!" (God is great) rose from the throats of Egyptian soldiers as they stormed across the Suez Canal and overran the lightly manned Israeli strongpoints of the Bar Lev Line. Later the first Egyptian flag raised on the eastern bank of the canal was presented to the Grand Sheik of Cairo's Al Azhar Mosque.
Military historians generally agree that Israel had the upper hand when a cease-fire ended the October War, 22 days after it began. Nonetheless, the initial Arab successes were hailed by Muslim commentators as the greatest victories since Saladin defeated the Crusaders at the Battle of Hittin in 1187 and recaptured Jerusalem. Muslims all over the world took pride in the early Egyptian-Syrian triumphs of the war and the even greater economic triumphs that grew out of the 1973 oil embargo.
A number of recent events have combined to focus Western attention on Islam: the resurgence of the faith in African politics, the oil wealth of the Arabian peninsula, the revolution in Iran. But many Muslims feel, with some justice, that this belated interest in their world and their faith has resulted in hostile propaganda rather than empathy and understanding.
Islam is frequently stereotyped as unmitigatedly harsh in its code of law, intolerant of other religions, repressive toward women and incompatible with progress. Salem Azzam, Saudi secretary-general of the Islamic Council of Europe, feels that the present resurgence is considered "retrograde and reactionary" because Westerners confuse what is happening in Islam with a revival of Christian fundamentalism. "Not only is this a baseless and arrogant assumption," says Azzam, but it is tantamount to "a return to colonialism�indirect but of a more profound type." Defenders of the faith further argue that Islam is not monolithic, that it is compatible with various social and economic systems, and that far from being a return to the Dark Ages, it is wholly consonant with progress. Items:
Islam and Government. Muhammad's teachings are fundamentally democratic, since they proclaim the equality of all men before God. In practice, Islamic nations, like other countries, have both liberals and conservatives, democrats and dictators. The Islamic socialists of Iraq and Libya�not to mention Iranian moderates who want to see a parliamentary democracy established by their new constitution�look with disdain on a semifeudal monarchy like Saudi Arabia. Says Hussein Bani-Assadi, son-in-law of Iran's Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan: "Ideologically, this revolution cannot support systems like Saudi Arabia's. Islam has no kings." The Saudis answer that they have an institution that serves the needs of their society: the majlis, where King Khalid and the major princes of the royal family can be approached by the humblest petitioner in the land. In essence, government in Islamic theory is to be a regulator rather than a direct agent in every sphere of life. Its prime duty is to ensure that the basic principles of social justice are realized.
Islam and Economics. A devout Muslim would be equally opposed to the materialism of the West and the atheism of Communism. Islam has a flexible view of economics, which lends itself to either capitalist or socialist interpretations. It approves individual initiative, respects private property and tolerates profits within limits. Muslims, in short, are encouraged by their faith to acquire the good things of this world, but the emphasis is on moderation and communal responsibility.
The Koran condemns usury, but interest is allowed if the money is to be used for the common good. In Saudi Arabia, Islamic banks have emerged side by side with Western banks. They do not charge interest but instead take equity in projects they finance, thus sharing in losses as well as profits.
Tithing is one of the five pillars of the Muslim faith. In several Islamic states, an annual tax of 2.5%, called the zakat, is levied against an individual's assets for the benefit of the community. The principle of wealth-sharing extends to governments as well. Saudi Arabia distributes about 7% of its evergrowing G.N.P. (estimated at $66 billion in 1978) to less privileged Muslim states in the form of low-cost loans and gifts. By comparison, U.S. foreign aid last year amounted to only one-third of 1% of G.N.P. Mahbub Haq, an economist with the World Bank, foresees a billion-dollar World Muslim Foundation, financed by oil-rich Middle Eastern states, that will organize and provide aid for poor Islamic nations that adhered to the faith even during its years of ebb and decline. Says he: "The Muslim countries need their own OECD."
Islam and Progress. Muslim scholars insist that nothing in Islam is incompatible with technological advance or industrial development. In the days of the caliphs, Islam led the world in scientific and intellectual discoveries. What Muslims object to are the evils associated with modernization: the breakdown of the family structure, the lowering of moral standards, the appeal of easygoing secular lifestyles. At the same time, Muslims are demanding the best of the West: schools, hospitals, technology, agricultural and water development techniques. Harvesting the fruits of modernization without absorbing some of its side-effects may prove to be impossible. But Sheik Mahmoud Abu Obayed of Cairo's Al Azhar University says Muslims should strive for industrialization with "careful selectivity. We must choose what is suitable for us and reject what is harmful." Anwar Ibrahim, head of Malaysia's Islamic Youth Movement, puts it another way: "Does modernization mean having liquor factories? If so, then we are against modernization. Does modernization mean electronics factories? Then we are for modernization. There's nothing in Islam against development, but such development must have a moral basis. It must be just, not exploitative."
Dismay over the effects of industrialization helped fuel the popular unrest that brought down the Shah in what Princeton's Richard Falk calls "the first Third World revolution, one which is neither Marxist nor capitalist but indigenously Islamic." Some Iranian officials believe that their revolution will inspire other uprisings in the Muslim world. "I think a new era of Islamic struggle and a new Islamic awareness have been triggered by our revolution," says Ibrahim Yazdi, Deputy Prime Minister for Revolutionary Affairs. "From now on, all Islamic movements that were dormant or apologetic in their approach to change or action will come out in the open in the Muslim world."
Few doubt that Iran's revolution will have far-reaching effects, though it seems unlikely to be repeated. In many ways, the situation in Iran was a unique phenomenon in the Middle East. The Shah had a more limited base of support than the remaining monarchies in the Islamic world apparently have. Most Iranians belong to the Shi'ite branch of Islam, which predominates in Iran, Iraq and Kuwait. The holy men of Iran have a long history of political activism. As one religious leader toting a gun in post-revolutionary Tehran put it, "Politics is a part of life, and the mullah's field of interest is life itself." Moreover, the Iranian religious structure, unlike that in most Muslim countries, was financially independent of the government. But there are several Islamic nations where discontent could pose problems. Among them:
Saudi Arabia. The birthplace of Muhammad is the most strictly orthodox Muslim society on earth; rulers and ruled profess adherence to the austere, fundamentalist Wahhabi sect, noted for its zealous enforcement of the Shari'a. But there is a widening gap between the very rich and very poor, a heavy influx of foreign workers, and a pace of development that may be too rapid for an underpopulated country to handle. Although the Wahhabi leaders have close links to the royal family, there is a small Islamic movement that is critical of the debauchery of spoiled princelings on their sojourns outside the country and that challenges the dynasty's claim to be the sole spokesman for Islam. Tapes by a Kuwaiti scholar, Dr. Abdullah Nafisi, attacking the Saudi rulers and heralding Khomeini as the "real Muslim," sell for $200 on the black market in Jiddah.
Egypt. Despite his personal piety, President Sadat is the pariah of the Middle East; he has now followed up his fearless offer of sanctuary to the Shah by signing a peace treaty with Israel. Some officials in Tehran have said that they expect Egypt to be the first country to feel the shock waves of their revolution. Sensing the potential for trouble, the government censored news of Iran's turmoil in the Egyptian press. Islamic fundamentalists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, are a growing force in the country. Islam is Egypt's state religion, but most of the ulama tend to support the government, in part because they are dependent on Cairo for religious funds. Many laymen, in fact, consider the ulama as part of the Establishment they seek to undermine. Last month Sadat issued a strong warning against religious interference in Egypt's political life. There must be, he said in a speech at Alexandria University, "no religion in politics, no politics in religion."
Sudan. The largest nation in Africa is linked to Egypt by a defense treaty, and the two countries have moved closer toward a political and economic confederation. President Gaafar Nimeiri endorsed Sadat's visit to Jerusalem and the Camp David accords, but that stand is not universally popular. Despite a policy of reconciliation aimed at ending the intrigues and coups that have plagued the Sudan since it became independent in 1956, Nimeiri still faces opposition from the National Front led by Anwar Sadiq al-Mahdi, who advocates an Islamic state like neighboring Libya. If Sadat were to fall from power, Nimeiri almost certainly would as well.
Iraq. The revolution in Iran has been a cause for some concern in the ruling Baath Party; its leadership is Sunni, while 52% of Iraq's 12 million people are Shi'ites. As in Iran, the mullahs have a tradition of political activism, and there have been violent clashes between religious dissidents and the regime's 125,000-man all-Sunni "popular army." Although government corruption and mismanagement of oil wealth are not major issues, General Saddam Hussein runs a tough police state: dissent is ruthlessly suppressed and Iraqi jails are said to hold thousands of political prisoners. The government's greatest worry is a revival of unrest among the 2 million Kurds, who share with their ethnic cousins in Turkey and Iran a desire for an autonomous Kurdistan of their own.
Afghanistan. Since September the pro-Soviet regime of President Noor Mohammed Taraki has been caught up in a bitter civil war; Moscow has charged�and Washington has angrily denied�that the U.S. instigated the rebellion. Some of the insurgents are inspired by tribal animosities, others by political opposition to the government's leftist ways. According to one U.S. expert in the area, "Islam has proved to be the major unifying theme for the rebels." Many of them have moved to armed camps in Pakistan. Taraki has tried to highlight his own credentials as a good Muslim; recently the government publicized a letter of support from a group of Soviet Muslims across the border. But a number of mullahs have been arrested for speaking out against the government in the mosques, and some Iranian ayatullahs have called for support for the Afghan rebels.
Turkey. Islam is still a potent force in secular Turkey, and religious violence between the dominant Sunni Muslims and the Alevis, a Shi'ite sect, has recently injected a dangerous new element into the country's chronic political instability. Ancient rivalries between the two groups are being exploited by both right-and left-wing extremists. Last December Sunni gangs massacred a hundred Alevis in the southern Turkish town of Maras. But unlike the Shah's Iran, Turkey has a functioning democratic system, and no single issue or popular figure unites the opposition. The government is fearful, however, that "political opportunists" will try to capitalize on religious rancor. Premier B�lent Ecevit has launched a vigorous television and radio campaign appealing for unity and tolerance.
Soviet Union. During a 1977 visit to Moscow by Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev proposed opening a Soviet consulate in Benghazi. Fine, said Gaddafi, Libya would like a consulate in Tashkent. "Why Tashkent?" asked Brezhnev. "Because I understand there are a lot of Muslims in that part of Russia," Gaddafi answered, "and I'd like to take care of them." Obviously unwilling to give the fiery Libyan a chance to arouse religious feelings among the Soviet Union's 50 million Muslims, the Kremlin leaders shelved the notion. The Muslims of the U.S.S.R. constitute a demographic time bomb for Moscow; by the year 2000 there will be 100 million of them, compared with an estimated 150 million Russians. Already party leaders in the Muslim republics of Central Asia are displaying political muscle by pressing for high-priority development projects.
Some observers believe that the Muslims have more freedom than any other religious group in the Soviet Union to practice their faith. The mosques are full on Fridays and holy days, and small delegations have been allowed to leave the country to take part in the hajj. Muslim leaders, the muftis, have apparently worked out a kind of modus vivendi with the government; in exchange for being allowed to practice their religion they often support the government on major policy questions. Any kind of Islamic resistance to the Soviet system would probably emerge from a large network of Sufi brotherhoods, ultraconservative secret societies that are banned by Soviet law. Sufi adherents worship in clandestine mosques and practice a kind of "parallel Islam" to the officially sanctioned one.
Should the West be fearful of an Islamic revival? Most experts agree that in the long run the answer is no. In the immediate future, though, Washington obviously does worry about the consequences of more instability in the Middle East. Thus, as a result of the Iranian revolution, U.S. analysts are taking a much closer look at the social forces simmering in other Islamic nations, both poor and wealthy. Says Secretary of State
Cyrus Vance: "The Islamic resurgence in a number of countries indicates a return to fundamental roots and a greater reliance on principles that were pushed aside in the move toward modernization." The revival of Islam does not portend a regressive return to the past or a rejection of all international ties, in the Administration's view. Muslim nations will continue to require economic support from and want to cooperate with Western industrialized countries.
In strategic matters also, U.S. analysts believe that Islam and the West have compatible goals. Basically, Islamic states are antiCommunist. Says a senior State Department official: "I think we share a common concern and can work together to develop a set of friendly relationships, which can lead to ultimate stability in the region." Whether or not that proves to be the case, the West can no longer afford to ignore or dismiss the living power of the Prophet's message.
Source:
Taken from TIME Magzine
Apr. 16, 1979
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