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9
‌

I
AND
T
HOU IN A
F
LUID
W
ORLD
: B
EYOND
‘‘I
SLAM VERSUS THE
W
EST
’’

•

Omid Safi

Another world is possible.

We as God’s children are not bound to live in fear and poverty, humiliation and rage. Other paths are possible, and they must be sought. The path to there has to start here, with each and every one of us. There is a time for peace, a time for dignity, and a time for self-determination. And that time is now.

We are perpetually surrounded by cliche´s of ‘‘clash of civilizations,’’ ‘‘Islam versus the West,’’ and so on. We insist that it is part of our task to rise up to an acknowledgement of a fluid, hybrid world in which nationality and ethnicity, religion and race, sexuality and gender, class and political commitment each frame one facet of larger, broader, more cosmopolitan identities. Neither reli- gion nor nationalism will be accepted as a monolith that somehow exhausts one’s identity. In the words of Edward W. Said, in the aftermath of colonial- ism, all identities are hybrid, fluid, and overlapping: ‘‘Partly because of em- pire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, hetereogenous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic.’’
1

The aim of this chapter is to conceive of an American Muslim identity in a way that allows for such a hetereogenous and differentiated acknowledgment of the multiple layers of our identities. However, before doing so it is manda- tory to visit, challenge, critique, and deconstruct the powerful and seductive paradigm of ‘‘Islam versus the West’’ (and the twin ‘‘clash of civilizations’’) before we can offer a more holistic alternative. To do so, we will first deal with Muslim Westernophobes and then with Western Islamophobes.

MOVING BEYOND MUSLIM WESTERNOPHOBIA

One of the tasks of Muslims committed to the highest mandates of ethical responsibility before God is to engage the voices and actions of Muslims who have declared a war on other Muslims as well as Westerners—governments

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Voices of Change

and civilians alike. Many such expressions take place in the context of responses to Western colonialism and imperialism.
2
Whereas critiques of Western imperialism and colonialism are a time-honored and proud tradition of all anticolonial and postcolonial movements,
3
most of these movements have not historically redirected the violence of colonialism back against the civilians of Euro-American civilization, as well as engaging in guerilla tactics against fellow Muslims, as we see in the case of current Iraq. Yet these hideous practices are precisely the case for Al Qaeda today.

The piece of propaganda issued by the self-proclaimed ‘‘World Islamic Front,’’ masquerading as an Islamic legal opinion (
fatwa
) and signed by Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, reads in part:

...
In compliance with God’s order, we issue the following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is pos- sible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Holy Mosque [Mecca] from their grip
4

This ‘‘fatwa,’’ which appeared in the Arabic journal
al-Quds,
presented this duty as a ‘‘religious obligation’’ (
fard
) upon all Muslims.
5
Subsequent interviews with Bin Laden make it clear that he viewed the 9/11 attacks as targeted against the symbols of American military and economic structures. He justifi the attacks as a form of ‘‘defensive jihad,’’ and time and again came back to the notion that ‘‘the Jewish lobby has taken America and the West hostage.’’
6
Usama Bin Laden also dismissed out of hand the views of Muslim jurists who have challenged the jihad justifi tion as ‘‘having no value.’’ Other Al Qaeda members such as Sulaiman Abu Ghaith have also decried the ‘‘Crusader-Zionist’’ conspiracy, comprised of Bush, Blair, and Israel.
7

The task of contemporary Muslims in confronting this perspective is quite complicated. We begin by a critical discussion of the spectrum of interpreta- tions of jihad in Islamic history, and by making the case that no such attack against civilians can be justifi under Islamic law. Yet ours is not a mere theoretical conversation, but one that seeks to transform societies as well. So we also seek to engage those in Muslim societies who gravitate toward such messages by calling them to the higher ground of pluralism and justice. Lastly, while questioning the usefulness of the ‘‘Crusader-Zionist’’ conspiracy as a totalizing explanation, we also have a responsibility to call Americans to envision a relationship with the Middle East which is not based on the unilateral support of Israel regardless of the latter’s actions. We will have to insist that both Palestinians and Israelis observe international human rights regulations, and in cases where either is guilty of breaking these laws, to help in bringing them to justice and establishing alternatives on the ground. In the case of Israel, that means forming broad coalitions with

I and Thou in a Fluid World
201

Jewish peace groups who wish to live side by side with their Arab neighbors in a peace rooted in justice.
8
It also means to admit at the most humane level the legitimate right of Israeli mothers and fathers to be able to send their chil- dren to schools or cafes without worrying about them being blown to pieces by Palestinian suicide-bombers. In the case of Palestinians, it means working with Palestinians to take a page from Gandhi, and express their legitimate re- sistance through nonviolent means, while bringing the world’s conscience to focus on their plight.
9
It also means to admit at the most humane level that Palestinian children have the right to live in dignity and not to be mocked or shot at by the IDF (Israel Defence Force), and that Palestinian families have the right to live in their homes in peace and not have them bulldozed by the Israeli military. This is a long and daunting task, but we perceive of ourselves as bridge-makers whose task and calling it is to bring together the silent majority of humanity who wish to live in peace and harmony with one another. The Muslim extremists’ hatred of the West is far too commonly known for me to devote more space to its discussion here. I will now move to its far less discussed mirror image, Western Islamophobia.
10

MOVING BEYOND WESTERN ISLAMOPHOBIA

Contemporary Muslims in the West also have a task to critique Western Islamophobes in academia and policy circles, and to provide alternate models. With the ascent of the Neo-Conservative movement, it is hard to overemphasize the power this Islamophobic perspective currently has in America.
11
One of the gravest tasks of Western Muslims is to expose the ideological background of many ‘‘Islam versus West’’ proponents who are positioned in the highest places of power in the United States, and to offer viable alternatives. We will begin here by reviewing two of the most noted—and notorious—voices of Islamophobia in the West, Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington.

Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis is simultaneously one of the most celebrated and most vilifi scholars of Islam and Middle Eastern Studies in the West. His scholarly life covers over 65 years, extending from 1938 to the present. He is frequently acknowledged, however disputed this claim might be, as ‘‘the foremost Western scholar of Islam.’’ At the time of the writing of this chapter, two of the current four best selling books on Islam (
What Went Wrong
and
The Crisis of Islam
) were composed by Lewis.