Sharia law, when coupled with ijtihad (reason applied to religious texts), has a lethal power. Against jihadism, that is, whether of the Islamic State (IS) group, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Nusra Front, the friends of Beit Al-Maqdis or Boko Haram. These are the forces of evil that have long manipulated a legitimate longing — the longing of 1.7 billion Muslims to join the world's caravan, moving toward technological progress while keeping the values of the faith. Yet that longing needs a voice, an institutional voice, and a voice that does not simply say that Islam is a religion of tolerance. This is because Islam, though simple to understand, can be confusing to comprehend, especially for the Western mind. And we are all now living in an age of rage, of non-state actors, of Trumpism, which puts force ahead of reason. To find a voice that can effectively counter jihadism, I peer over the horizon from New York City, looking eastward for a distance of 7,000 miles. On that horizon I can imagine seeing the four minarets of Al-Azhar in Cairo, a mosque and a university that is more than 1,000 years old. That is where my late father studied, and he brought up his family on the love of Al-Azhar. Al-Azhar has a universal message for all and it teaches Islam in all its stripes, mainly Sunni and Shia. It has always been the focus of Egyptian nationalism and universal interaction. That is where the educational ideas of the American senator Joseph Fulbright originated in the 14th century, when the African emperor Mansa Musa of the Mali Empire decided on the bold course of sending students to study abroad at Al-Azhar and funding a branch of it in Timbuktu. I shared some of this history at Columbia University in 1954, when Fulbright greeted me as a Fulbright scholar. I was enchanted by the fact that his ideas had originated in Africa and centuries later had entered the US congressional record. The link between Al-Azhar and Africa is long and deep, part of the reason why its present rector, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, a Sorbonne graduate, chose Abuja, the Nigerian capital, to address the catastrophe of Boko Haram. This is a hideous term, meaning “Western learning is un-Islamic”. This is a total negation of what Islam (both faith and knowledge) has stood for since the 7th century, except during the dark ages, not of the Crusaders (that was a passing episode) but of the Ottoman Empire. This was an empire that suffered from a split personality, having a diversity of religions but a glorification of Turkish culture and an avoidance of modernisation. In Nigeria, Al-Tayeb's voice could be heard reverberating through the great continent where Egyptian civilisation, born 7,000 years ago, was the first African civilisation and is still enduring today. It is threatened only by jihadism, of which Boko Haram, Al-Shabab and the IS franchises are the standard bearers. The booming voice of Al-Azhar, uttered by its grand imam hosted by the Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari (a Muslim from northern Nigeria), carried multiple messages, all of which are anti-jihadist. In his first salvo, Al-Tayeb called jihadists “wrongdoers” and quoted from the Qur'an: “And do not think that God is unaware of what the wrongdoers do. He only puts them in respite until a day when eyes shall stare” (Chapter 14; Verse 42). Referring to the wayward jihadists as wrongdoers (calling them Muslim extremists would be to give in to their hijacking of the mantle of Islam), Al-Tayeb went on to turn the tables on them. “They have placed Islam unjustly in the defendant's box, tarnishing its image, and besmirching its exalted status by blood-letting and cutting off heads on television — a barbarism unknown before in history.” And to what end? Who is behind this anti-Islamic insanity? The rector of Al-Azhar provided his Nigerian audience (Muslims, Christians and others) with his hypothesis. “Search for the one who is the beneficiary of this mischief, standing solidly behind these crimes in the name of Islam. It is those who fund it, those who provide it with arms and other materials, those who help these groups in planning, and those who provide them with a false cover of legitimacy [that benefit from it],” he said.
THE MESSAGE OF ISLAM: The rector of Al-Azhar was standing on the soil of a country of nearly 200 million people, of whom about 60 per cent are Muslims living mostly in the north. This is an African economy that is number one in all of Africa, followed by Egypt and then South Africa. This is the great African triangle of Cairo, Abuja and Pretoria, rounded in the east by a fourth historic capital, Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. “If we are to exit these bloody crises that afflict our world from end to end, and whose victims are largely the poor and uneducated of every faith and creed, we have to chart a new course,” Al-Tayeb said. “A course which begins by a question: is the relationship between Islam and other religions based on tension, suspicion, and foreboding? No. In the Qur'an, Islam is not only the name of a certain faith. Islam is the name of a common faith to which all believers, from whatever faith, subscribe.” He continued, “The Qur'an describes Abraham as having been a Muslim thousands of years before Mohamed's message. The Qur'an speaks of Ismail and Isaac as they raised the foundations of the first place of worship, saying ‘O Lord, lead us to submit to Your Will and raise from our offspring a nation which will submit to Your Will' (Chapter 2; Verse 128). Here the emphasis is on the connotation of the term “Muslim,” meaning those who submit to the will of the Creator. This is not restrictive, as the jihadists in their ignorance advocate, to the world of Islam alone, an important distinction of an ideological nature in the ideological war on jihadism. On the stance of the Qur'an on other holy books, Al-Tayeb provided a definitive response, pointing to equal respect and parallel veneration. Citing the Qur'anic text on the Torah where it says, “It was We who revealed the Law to Moses, therein was guidance and light. By its standard have been judged the Jews, by the Prophets who bowed, as in Islam, to God's will, by the rabbis and the doctors of law” (Chapter V; Verse 44). This was followed by the Qur'anic commentary on the New Testament of the Bible. “And in their footsteps we sent Jesus the son of Mary, confirming the Law that had come before him. We sent him the Gospel, therein was guidance and light, and confirmation of the Law that had come before him, a guidance and an admonition to those who fear God” (Chapter V; Verse 46). As if in a heavenly club of God's messengers, whose membership is premised on equality, Al-Tayeb cited the Prophet Mohamed as per his authenticated tradition. In that tradition, the Prophet of Islam declared, “I am the most rightful inheritor of Jesus, in this world and in the hereafter. The Messengers are brothers. They are born to different mothers, but have one faith.” What an apt riposte, a quick counterstrike, to the dark heart of the jihadists who claim that the only true religion is Islam embellished by the wickedness of their claim that it is “reserved only for Sunni Muslims”. This wipes out the verity that in Islam there is no Sunni vs. Shia conflict, apart from in the minds of those who use faith as a mechanism of control. In his historic speech in Abuja, Al-Tayeb did not limit the circle of respect and authenticity to the revealed religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as more than half of humanity follows Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. He clarified the reason for the Qur'anic silence on these faiths, saying, “These were religions not known to the Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula nearly 1,500 years ago. Yet they are included within the spacious tent of the Qur'an in regard to the respect and equal treatment expected of every Muslim towards the adherents of these faiths.” That inclusiveness is manifest in the Qur'anic instruction of justice and amity towards “the adherents of every faith, every creed, and every philosophy which does not attack Muslims in Muslim lands.” These are the very words of Al-Tayeb in Abuja, words that he bolstered by the primary source of Islamic Law, the Qur'an: “God forbids you not, with regard to those who fight you not for your faith nor drive you out of your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them, for God loveth those who are just” (Chapter 60; Verse 8).
THE ONENESS OF ISLAM: This material covers only half of the Abuja speech, but in the remaining space let us draw the following conclusions. Jihadism is not Islam. Calling the criminal activities of jihadists “militant Islam” is a misnomer. The word “Islam,” if joined to their self-made name, would be a misconception that indirectly advanced their criminal cause. Jihadist activity has nothing to do with the true Islamic meaning of jihad. Jihad in Islam is of two kinds, both of which are legitimate. The first is internal and consists of self-policing to control certain base urges. The second is self-defence and is permitted under all kinds of law, including international law. The unity between the faiths, as stressed by Al-Tayeb, is a cardinal tenet of Islam. The principle of tawheed, or “oneness,” applies in two directions, the oneness of the Creator and the oneness between each faith and other faiths. The first type is vertical and the second type is horizontal and universal. It is noteworthy that the fear of Islam is not only a consequence of ignorance of its precepts and of its Arabic lingua franca. It is also the consequence of its criminal enemies, “the jihadists”. Ironically, jihadism, which has afflicted our world since 9/11 and beyond, has unwitting Muslim auxiliaries. Some examples include in Switzerland, where students shaking the hand of their teacher upon entering or exiting a classroom is a tradition. But at a school in the small town of Therwil two Syrian immigrant brothers refused to shake their female teacher's hand, igniting national outrage. The cantonal board of education decided against the students, and in doing so the Swiss acted properly, even if the Islamic Central Council of Switzerland opposed the ruling. In 2009, the Swiss voted in a national referendum to ban the construction of minarets. A Saudi national had sued the municipality where he resided for preventing him from building the tallest minaret in the world. Because of his refusal to abide by Swiss zoning laws regarding the height of any construction, a total ban was issued. Once again, the Swiss edict was the correct one. Fear of the “creeping Islamisation” of Europe, to which millions of Muslims are fleeing from Muslim lands, is rampant. In Germany, nearly one million migrants arrived in 2015. Recently, the government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed an integration law giving these immigrants a quid pro quo, or something for something. They would be given a path to full employment but would be required to learn German and accept local laws and customs. And why not? We all remember how on New Year's Eve last year a group of Muslim hooligans went on the rampage in Frankfurt, groping German women in violation of every law, religious or secular, and of every custom having to do with privacy and the sanctity of the individual. Hundreds of culprits are now being readied for ejection. The gulf between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world remains vast. Of course, as Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian, an Iranian scholar at Princeton University in the US, has said, targeting Muslims is a real threat to peace. In late 2015, Mousavian said this in an article on the US website the Huffington Post, making his comments just months before the anti-Islamic tsunami of Donald Trump, now the assured nominee of the Republican Party for the American presidency. But the fact remains that the polls indicate that seven of the top 10 countries which view America most unfavourably are Muslim ones. It is obvious that the US-Israel strategic alliance plays a considerable role in this, but that is not the complete picture. Issues of faith and politics cross one another at dangerous angles, including the misunderstanding of Islam by non-Muslims and those who call themselves Muslims, as in the case of the jihadists. However, at least on the religious ramparts there stands a sentinel called Al-Azhar, whose head, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, is engaged in global efforts at enlightened clarification. His message has been carried to Germany, followed by Nigeria, followed by the Vatican, and most recently to France. France was where Al-Tayeb internalised many of his values at his alma mater of the Sorbonne in Paris. He imbibed the message of liberté, egalité et fraternité there, the message of the French Revolution with its universal application. This is most effective wooden stake to be plunged into the heart of Dracula, the name that best fits the so-called jihadists of today.
The writer is a professor of law at New York University.
