Sayyid Qutb and Jihad

Earlier this week, the Washington Post ran an article by Lorenzo Vidino on "Five myths about the Muslim Brotherhood." Here's an unpublished letter to the editor I wrote in response:

In “Five myths about the Muslim Brotherhood” (3/4/11), Lorenzo Vidino contends Sayyid Qutb “opted for violence” and has “inspired jihadists worldwide.” While true, these observations require some context.


After years of torture in Egyptian prison, Qutb published his political and religious treatise Milestones. While he vigorously defends the Islamic obligation of “jihad of the sword,” Qutb also argues a true Islamic society must fulfill that obligation. Importantly, Qutb laments that no such society exists. Thus as a first step, a “vanguard” of true believers must leave unbelieving society in order to study the Qur’an and determine how such a society can be formed.

In short, Qutb believed the times call for religious introspection, not violence. Yet there is no question his argument has been misconstrued by countless violent extremists, cherry picking Qutb’s arguments just as they cherry pick the Qur’an itself.

Some of the blame for this confusion lies with Qutb himself. Not long after he published Milestones, he was implicated in a conspiracy to overthrow the Egyptian regime. While his exact role is not clear, the Egyptian court misinterpreted Milestones just as modern violent extremists do today – twisting Qutb’s arguments as an immediate call for jihad.

Scary Muslims in Sweden?

This video recently came to my attention through the Jewish grapevine about the threat of Islam in Malmö, Sweden:




Understandably, any Jew watching this clip would feel alarm. But there's more to this clip than the narrative it tells. I'll begin with its source: CBN. The Christian Broadcasting Network was founded by the conservative televangelist Pat Robertson. As a representative of the far-right evangelical Christian community, he is accustomed to inciting controversy for his views. Among other examples, he suggested Ariel Sharon was punished by God after suffering a stroke:



And in case you don't trust MSNBC, here's a clip from CBN two days after 9/11 with Pat Robertson and his ally Jerry Falwell. Not only do they claim God allowed the terrorists to attack us because we haven't pursued their ultra-conservative Christian agenda, but Falwell says we probably deserved it.




That clip was filmed more than a year after Sen. McCain called Robertson and his ally Jerry Falwell intolerant and wrongheaded during the 2000 presidential campaign (though he has since backtracked). The point is Robertson views the world through a religious lens - one most of us would not agree with.

As such, when we watch anything from CBN, we need to filter their narrative to determine what we should accept as fact and what we should evaluate as opinion. Of course, this advice holds true for any news source, but for CBN it is especially important. Unlike other news sources that strive for fair and balanced reporting - or at least claim to do so rhetorically - CBN has no qualms in admitting it adheres to an evangelical Christian perspective.

So let me provide another perspective from a Muslim friend who actually lives in Malmö. As the CBN video claims, there has been a large influx of Muslim immigrants to Sweden, as well as other Scandinavian and European countries. Many have come because of wars in Iraq and the Balkans or because of persecution in their home countries. However, as she told me, "there is no risk that Muslims will take over Sweden, EVER." Even in Malmö, there is only one mosque outside the city "since the people didn't want one and especially not close to the center."

Muslims face many challenges in Sweden. Many immigrants live in slums, not only because they can't afford better, but because "some areas won't accept immigrants." Meanwhile, Muslims in Denmark face special legal difficulty bringing their spouses to Europe. As such, they often live in Sweden while working in Denmark, further adding to the swell of immigrants in Malmö.

Denmark is now "very open" about their racism, as shown by the firebrand anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, who pretended to tear a Qur'an in half in his documentary Fitna. Importantly, Wilders has strong ties with the Swedish Democrats (SD) party and the International Free Press Society quoted in the CBN clip. According to my friend, SD is a racist party and no other Swedish party is "willing to talk to them [and] the newspapers won't publish anything that has to do with them." Importantly, there is a mainstream Christian party called the Christian Democrats.

As for the demonstrations shown in the CBN segment, they occurred during the war in Gaza and tempers were running high. Nonetheless, my friend insists they weren't violent as the clip implies, but were instead just the result of "stupid youth" getting together. Nor do Jews get physically attacked all the time, as CBN claims.

What I find ironic is that, in a clip that seeks to expose discrimination against the Jewish community, discrimination against Islam lurks beneath the surface. As my friend points out, "he clearly thinks all Muslims are bad and that Islam is a threat." The problem is not that the clip identifies some Muslims behaving badly, but that it generalizes that behavior to all Muslims. Bill O'Reilly on Fox News has made that same point several times in light of Robertson's claims that Islam is a violent religion that seeks global domination. For example, see this recent segment below (or this one here).





In an interesting article on YNet, Rabbi Levi Brackman asks whether Israelis should accept the friendship of American Christians. He eschews the Islamophobia of Pat Robertson and others like him who condemn all Muslims as violent: "good people will study their holy books and only see goodness and love within its pages. Evil people, conversely, will see, within the same book, a mandate to hate, murder and terrorize." As such, Rabbi Brackman urges us to "be wary of those intolerant people who use their religion to look down upon and be intolerant of others." Luckily, there are many people "who care for what is good and right no matter which religion they believe in or from what part of the world they come."

Lucky indeed.

Jolie Adopts Syrian Orphan

Angelina Jolie has reportedly filed papers to adopt a child from Syria. As part of her job as a UN Goodwill Ambassador, she recently journeyed to Syria with Brad Pitt to visit the large Iraqi refugee community there. During her trip, she remarked "it is clear that the Syrian people, no matter the challenges or difficulties they may face, have always shown generous hospitality to people in need."

It is also clear that Jolie has always shown her generous hospitality as well. She has already adopted children from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam, as well as having three biological children. Now, having fallen in love with the Syrian people, she has apparently decided to take in a fourth adopted child.

While it isn't clear whether the child is Muslim or Christian (Syria is 10% Christian), I'll take this as an opportunity to mention Islam pays special attention to the plight of orphans. There are countless references in the Qur'an to the necessity of caring for orphans.

For example, Surah 2:215: "Whatever of your wealth you spend shall [first] be for your parents, and for the near of kin, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer; and whatever good you do, verily, God has full knowledge thereof."

And 93:9: "Therefore, the orphan shalt thou never wrong."

Of course, such emphasis on treating orphans well makes sense given the Prophet Mohammed was an orphan himself. Mohammed's father died when he was a baby and his mother died a few years later. As such, the Prophet first lived with a Bedouin family in the desert, then with his grandfather. Upon his grandfather's death, he moved in with his uncle, who introduced him to the world of caravan trading.

Interestingly, while Islam promotes the welfare of orphans, it also prohibits adoptions in the Western sense. When a family takes an orphan into their household, the orphan traditionally keeps the name of the biological father. This has two implications. One, orphans are entitled to any inheritance that remains from their biological family, but do not receive anything from their adopted family unless otherwise specified in a will. Two, orphans can marry the biological children of their adopted family, because they are technically not family.

In the modern era, practical considerations have allowed some flexibility with these rules. For example, American Muslims might give change the name of their adopted child for tax exemption reasons.

Bear Mauls Militants

The war on terror has found a much needed ally: hungry bears. The BBC reports (h/t Jonah Goldberg) that a bear killed two militants and wounded a third in the embattled region of Indian-administered Kashmir. According to the article, "the militants had assault rifles but were taken by surprise - police found the remains of pudding they had made to eat when the bear attacked."

Really? Pudding?

Interestingly, this is not the first time Muslim militants have been killed by animals. Shortly after the Taliban conquered Kabul, a lion killed and ate a Taliban fighter. The militant had jumped into the cage to prove Allah would protect him, but had not considered the fact that the lion had not been fed in weeks because of the civil war. Apparently, God helps those who help themselves - in this case, the starving lion.

The militant's brother sought retribution the next day by throwing a grenade at the lion, leaving the animal blind and lame. The lion, named Marjan, survived several more turbulent years and died shortly after the American invasion. According to the World Society for the Protection of Animals, the Afghan zookeepers showed the utmost dedication in trying to care for the lion, despite receiving intermittent pay and often lacking food themselves.

Perhaps the Taliban fighter should have read his Qur'an a little closer:

According to Surah 4:173: "whereupon unto those who attained to faith and did good deeds He will grant their just rewards, and give them yet more out of His bounty; whereas those who felt too proud and gloried in their arrogance He will chastise with grievous suffering: and they shall find none to protect them from God, and none to bring them succour."

And Surah 16:49: "For, before God prostrates itself all that is in the heavens and all that is on earth - every beast that moves, and the angels: [even] these do not bear themselves with false pride"

In other words, God has created everything in the universe, whether it be man, animal or angel. All of God's creations are equal in that sense that all prostrate in submission before God. Therefore, none have cause for pride or arrogance. By jumping into that lion cage, the Taliban fighter showed immense arrogance in believing he deserved God's protection against his own stupidity, and thus God granted him the "grievous suffering" he deserved.

At least, that's my non-expert non-Muslim interpretation.

Burning Holy Books

I previously asked why we are losing the war in Afghanistan. This story sheds some light. On Sunday, a group of Afghans burnt an effigy of President Obama during angry protests in the capital city of Kabul. The inciting incident? Rampant rumors that American forces had desecrated the Qur'an.

Per Laura King of the Los Angeles Times:

"Muslims were disrespected!" said Zabiullah Khalil, an engineering student. "The foreigners shot the Koran, and then they burned it. They should be tried for this."

This was not the first time Afghans have gone to the streets over Qur'an desecration rumors. In 2005, Newsweek reported that American soldiers flushed a Qur'an down the toilet in Guantanamo. Shortly thereafter, the magazine recanted the story as false. The real story, in fact, derived from an incident when an inmate had dropped the holy book in the vicinity of a toilet. No matter. Furious protests in Afghanistan were only abruptly ended when police shot into the crowd, leaving four people dead and one burnt Bush effigy lying in the street.

Nor is this the first time holy book burning has caused a scandal inside Afghanistan. Earlier this year, al-Jazeera acquired exclusive footage of U.S. soldiers purportedly discussing how to proselytize Afghans and distribute native-language Bibles. In response to the ensuing scandal, the U.S. military confiscated the bibles and incinerated them. You can see the raw footage of the meeting here, but this clip below sums up the scandal pretty well.

I wonder what the protesters in Kabul think about American "crusaders" burning their own Bibles - or even if they know about the incident at all. In the end, it doesn't matter whether rumors about burning the Qur'an are true or not, or whether proselytizing Christianity is official U.S. policy. Extremists who want to hate the United States will find their reasons. There is nothing we can do about that.

The troubling thing is that the protesters in Kabul were not the Taliban ideologues. They were students. The question is how do we win their trust? How do we convince them to not so readily consume Taliban propaganda? We can begin by not giving the extremists any excuse to fan the flames. But ultimately, only by improving the facts on the ground, whether through legitimate government or economic opportunity, can we regain the Afghan trust we have squandered over eight years of failed policies and neglect.