A response to Sheikh Murad's "Bombing Without Moonlight"

Introduction:

1)People like us who work for western institutions but are Islamically oriented have a guilty conscience. We need to rationalize our weaknesses in not making the sacrifice of life and wealth that our glorious heroes are daily making against most overwhelming odds. Acknowledging this sin is easy for a wretched sinner like myself but extremely difficult for spiritually sensitive persons who as an Imam says are enveloped in veils of light. The devil ignores me but goes after people who have potential of becoming aulia.

2)The enemy knows this and provides shelter, support and platform for such sincere scholars so that they oppose the Islamic movement on religious grounds and question its authenticity. Shaikh Murad reminds me of our dear brother Khurram Murad who gave in a different context very similar reasons for dialogue with the west and the Suadi royals. It is the sincere devotion of such scholars, which makes them of immense value to the enemy. Shiekh Murad reflects the great danger that the European convert community faces-the danger of becoming imperialism's front line agitators against the Islamic movements.

Summary of Sheik Murad’s paper:

1)Sheikh Murad describes, Islamic movement, as a heretic sect. Imam Qutb, according to him, is not a Muslim but a fascist, a concealed disciple of de Chardin and Alexis Carrel. Islamists are anti Semites and do not acknowledge that Palestine is the least inhospitable site for the Jewish diaspora because we are schooled on Mein Kampf. Islamists take their “spiritual armament from modernity” and are marked out for anachronism. “Islamists dismiss the juridical, theological and mystic intricacies of Islam as so much dead wood.” Imam Qutb rejects “Asharite de-ontology (sic)” and Sufi teachings and “jettisons” the political thought of Imam Mawardi and Imam Ghazali. Islamists are kharjis and are regarded as such by less radical puritans in Saudi Arabia. Everyone agrees that (Islamists) are far away from medieval sunnism.” Imam Ibn Taymiya was “angry with the past”. Imam Taymia believes that “God is alienated from His creation” Imam Taymiya‘s “ roots (are) in Harran (and) in neo Gnostic(s)” Imam Ghazali facilitated “ Seljuk accommodation”. Imam Ghazali apposes zealotry and like Nizam-ul-Mulk sanctions pluralism and his “ is a pragmatic achievement” “ Traditional Sunnies intuit that al Qaeda is a Western invention” “Islamism” is inauthentic and “rejects the classical cannons of Islamic law and theology.” Islamists are driven by nativist passion: The Palestinian jihad is nourished by the Tamil Tigers Hindu roots. Islamists combine xenophobia with a passion to acquire the Other’s technology. Islamists are seized by a rage which is undeniable. Hamas (advocates) "rage, revenge and the technological suspension of the ethical” Islamism represents a covert but deep surrender to enlightenment thought. Islamists reject the principles of tradition. Islamists bar intertextuality and the community of sages (and) are all engineers and doctors. Islamists have appropriate(ed) the machinery of centralized postcolonial states. Islamists have made “Muslim lands a prison rather than a landscape of options”. Islamists attack tradition and are inspired by Foucault and by Marxism.

2)All these are blatant lies and imperialism has put them in Sheikh Murad’s mouth. That is why he can only cite authors such as Garrett, Margalit, Habermas, Jewett, Roxanne L. Euben, Schleifer, Samuel Goitein, Zizek, John Kelsay, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Rosen, Waldman, Boyarin, Goldstien, Bernard Lewis, William Shephard and the Nasserites Salah Abd al-Fattah al-Khalidi and Youssef Choueiri in support of these slanderous taunts.

3)Shaikh Murad seeks to make Sunnis into allies of imperialism. He calls for a “Counter reformation.” The Islamic response to modernity should be that of self scrutiny as Sir Syed emphasized, Muslims should develop a toleration of many norms (and) be well aware of the ultimate indefinable quality of much of Holy writ. Sunnis (should) be conciliatory, cautious and disciplined seeking to identify the positive as well as the negative features of the new global culture and reject “totalitarian and exclusionary readings of the law and state". It is not enough to denounce the Islamists as the imperialist financed gathering at Putrajaya did. The sunni leadership needs to be more alert. The sunni leadership has not done enough (to defeat the Islamists) which remains the responsibility of the Muslim Ulema not of the west: “The war against this neo kharji ideology can only be won by the Sunnis”. “Liberalism (Sunnism’s ally) cannot be relied upon to supply ethics under condition of stress”. Sunnism advocates a “ theo politics invigorated by mutual tension (between) the Men of the Pen and the Men of the Sword”. The Sunnis need to overcome “capitalist shortsightedness”, not capitalism as such for with it they are in alliance. It is the responsibility of Sunnis to create a system grounded in the ethical brilliance of the monotheisms-presumably Islam and Judaism, for Christianity is compromised by its Enlightenment links. Thus order must be “cosmopolitan, non totalitarian”, remobilized to affirm the Other’s heart (and) reconnect the global system with religious reality. A successful war on terror cannot be detached from a humanly consensual war on environmental loss, on unfair trade on identity feminism and on genetic manipulation. If so detached it will be lost.

4)Shaikh Murad is a true humanist “Religion is indispensable to the nurturing of true humanism”. Despite his repeated criticism of the Enlightenment and of modernity be endorses Habermas’s project of reviving the Kantian morality which sanctions and provides a bases for the articulation of universal and individual autonomy, codes of human rights and legitimates the war against “Islamists”. The monotheism that can aid this imperialist adventure –the universalization of human rights and human autonomy- is a synthetic monotheism: Bearing “all the arms it has acquired and sharpened during its travels: its intellectual appropriation of Athens, its hospitality to the autochthonously non-Semitic, its insistence on diversity, all enabled and preserved by the centrality of spiritual purgation.” This many splendored modern/post modern monotheism will strengthen liberalism (which has proved to be too weak) and successfully terminate the suicidal civil war within the Enlightenment.

Our Response:

1) First we should make a clear distinction between imperialist mercenaries ( Fazl-urRehman, Eqbal Ahmed ,Mohsin Mahdi) and sincere scholars such as Shaikh Murad, Prof Khurshid, Allama Shariati , Imam Qardhavi, who seek reconciliation and dialogue with imperialism. This is very difficult because the sincere Muslim scholars hate us passionately. Shaikh Murad’s criticism of Imam Qutb and Imam Ibn Taymiya is shockingly contemptuous, arrogant and insolent. This hate reflects the guilt they experience for being unable to make even a small fraction of the sacrifices our heroes are making against the most overwhelming odds in their glorious struggle for Islam. But many of these heroes who willingly die for Islam do not live by it and their lives too are contaminated by sins and errors of both judgment and intention. All Islamic groups commit theoretical and practical mistakes and we must learn to love each other in spite of our faults. Our attitude towards the sincere pro imperialist Muslim scholars must be that of humility and reverence .We are great sinners and beseech them to come within the folds of the Islamic movement to correct our mistakes.

2)Shiekh Murad accuses us of being part of modernity. This is superficially correct in that we represent an Islamic response to modernity. Our key thinkers Imam Qutb and Maulana Maududi have taken western discourse seriously as the traditionalist Ulema have not. We understand modernity/post modernity to be the order of global capital (we are indebted to Imam PICKTHAL for this insight) and are struggling for the overthrow of global capitalist order from within it. We are forced to rely upon its technologies in this struggle, but are conscious of the need to eliminate this dependence. By building upon the thoughts of Imam Qutb and Maulana Muadudi we are developing a Ghazalian Critique of freedom and progress, modernity’s central values. The traditionalist Ulema have sought to preserve true Islam within capitalism. The resources they provide are indispensable for our struggle. The work of the traditional Ulama and the work we have undertaken are complimentary .We are the slaves of the traditional Ulema and Sufia and seek to put ourselves entirely under their command.

3)Our leaders are orthdox- Muslims. Imam Qutb was a Shafee, Maulana Maududi a Hanafi, neither was a faqih both were Mutakulimun. We reject Kharjiyat because it was a revolt against an Islamic state. We are not struggling for the overthrow of any state that is Islamic but of states that are subservient to global capitalist order and in which the Shariah is not in practice and is not the supreme law. Khuruj against un-Islamic rule is integral to Islamic orthodoxy as integral as attempts to preserve Islam within un-Islamic order. Both movements are complimentary to each other. Imam Zain ul Abideen and Imam Ja’far complement Imam Hussain. The Sahibain complement Imam Abu Hanifa (who died in prison because of his support of the Khuruj of Imam Nafs Zakiyya). The greatest leaders of Jihad in India, North Africa and central Asia have always emerged from the ranks of the Sufia. One need only mention the glorious role of the Yassavia order in sustaining the Jihad in Chechenya and Daghistan. Other shining examples of Sufi mujahideen are Mujaddin Alf Thani, Imam Sanusi, Hazrat Quttub ul Alam Imdaullah Mohajir Makki.

4)The Islamic movement is the natural home of the traditional Ulema and Sofia who alone can provide its authentic leadership. The movement needs to practice taqleedi ijtihad. This requires that all conceptions be legitimated by authentic ahkam derived on the basis of traditionally sanctioned usual. A return to Imam Ghazali is particularly important at this stage because a revival of the Ulum al Deen is urgently necessary. Isolation from global capital is no longer possible and we are forced into a posture of offensive defence against states subservient to capitalist order. The conciliatory approach advocated by Sheikh Murad (by reference to a small number of Ayats and Ahadis but without validation on the basis of their consensual interpretation) is no longer possible because human rights imperialism is uncompromisingly totalising. The diversity Shaikh Murad yearns for is neither desirable nor possible today for the market is colonizing all aspects of human life and all societies are collapsing into the political order of global capital. There are no non-combatants or innocent by standers in struggle against capital.

5) Abandoning Struggle and resistence is accepting subservience to human rights imperialism, freedom and progress. Islamic tradition does not sanction this surrender and there are no grounds for equating its acceptance of Islamic monarchy with its acceptance of the secular rule of global capital. Islamic tradition on the other hand provides indispensable resources for undertaking struggle and for avoiding the type of excesses of which we have sometimes been guilty. We humbly beseech the Ulema to accept the responsibility of leading the Islamic movement at this crucial turning point in history.


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A critique of Sheikh Murad