The Islamic Strategy for Reshaping the Modern World
E-Book, Englisch, 318 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-9892905-8-6
Verlag: Isaac Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
— 1 — INTRODUCTION We are living in a time of rapid Islamic growth. This undeniable fact is true in two senses. Firstly, the number of Muslim people is increasing, partly due to a high birth rate and partly because non-Muslims are converting to Islam. (Relatively few Muslims choose to leave Islam, for reasons that we shall see later.) Secondly, Islamic principles are impacting and influencing societies across the globe, both Muslim-majority societies with a historic Muslim cultural heritage and non-Muslim-majority societies with Judeo-Christian, Hindu or other heritages. Islamic sources, theology and history teach that all Muslims must engage in Islamic outreach or mission, known as dawa (literally “call” or “invitation”). In dawa, non-Muslims are called or invited to accept Islam as the true and final religion. Conversion takes place when a non-Muslim recites the Islamic creed (shahada): “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” Muslims call this “reversion” rather than “conversion”, because they believe that every human being was a Muslim at birth, after which some went astray and followed other religions. In this missionary aim, Islam resembles other missionary religions and sects. But there are two very important differences between, say, Christian mission and Islamic mission. The first is that most Christians are happy to see mission as a two-way process, with each faith having the freedom to propagate its message and try to convince others. Muslims, however, see dawa as a one-way street; only Islam has the right to propagate itself. They reject all Christian mission endeavours and seek to suppress them and smear them as aggressive, deceitful and evil. The other key difference is that dawa is more than just the call to an individual to accept Islam. It also includes “the commanding of good and forbidding of wrong”, both in Islamic societies and in non-Muslim-majority contexts. This means that the aims of dawa include establishing an Islamic state under sharia for Muslims and dominating non-Muslim nations so as to bring them under command of “the good”, which is Islam.7 The aim is to convert whole societies and their structures and create Islamic states or at least enclaves ruled by Islam. These will serve as models to show non-Muslims the power and benefits of Islam, as well as serving as bases from which to work for further expansion. After the non-Muslim-majority states have been converted to Islam, they will be integrated into the global umma (all Muslims worldwide). As Khurram Murad, a British Islamic scholar, explained: …there is the goal of bringing the same West to Islam, which would necessary mean that it would become part of the Muslim Ummah.8 Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905), who is regarded as the most prominent Muslim reformer of the 19th century,9 held that the first duty of the Islamic umma is the mission to call all other nations to the good, which is Islam.10 Indeed, according his disciple Rashid Rida (1865-1935), who interpreted Abduh’s teachings, “the umma … is created for the da‘wa in non-Muslim free countries”.11 The second duty, according to Abduh and Rida, is that of calling all Muslims themselves to obey God’s law afresh and apply it to their specific context.12 This teaching highlights the fact that dawa is not just aimed externally at non-Muslims so as to enlarge the umma and widen Islam’s religious and political dominion. Rather, there is also an internal dawa that targets Muslims to teach them the basics of Islam and strengthen their commitment to it. The Arabic word dawa appears in the Quran and is understood by Muslims as a divine command. Islamic teaching about dawa is based on these Quranic passages and also on references in Islam’s second most important written source, the hadith, and on the example of Muhammad and of early Islamic history. The Quran and hadith show that dawa was a main activity of Muhammad; this fact is very significant because of the Islamic doctrine that Muslims should model their behaviour on Muhammad’s example. Teaching on dawa was developed by Quranic commentary (tafsir), sharia and Islamic theology. Although not traditionally listed amongst the “pillars” of Islam (its five compulsory duties), many Muslim scholars stress that all Muslims must engage in dawa. Dawa is not just the duty of individual Muslims, but also the duty of Muslim states, which are responsible for converting non-Islamic states to Islam, following Muhammad’s model. Dawa literally means “call” and in Islamic terminology “an invitation to Islam”, and it is the raison d’etre of the existence of the Muslim ummah… It would not be incorrect to say that Islam means dawa – for dawa is essentially the fulfilment of Islam.13 CONVERSION, ISLAMISATION AND JIHAD In recent decades, Islamists have re-discovered the Islamic principle of dawa. Islamic mission agencies are energetically engaging in an effort to convert individuals to Islam using literature, TV and every kind of media and method. Islamists are also driving a major project to Islamise society and culture, including converting institutions and state structures to conform them to sharia. Through well-funded, imaginative, bold and long-term strategies, they are already seeing much success. These strategies have been discussed openly by Muslims in many of their publications over the last few decades. Now, however, these Muslim writings, at least those in English, are becoming very hard to get hold of. They are disappearing from libraries and from the internet. The book of resolutions and recommendations14 from the key Muslim World League conference in Mecca in 1975, for example, seems to be available to non-Muslims now only as one copy in the library of a small and obscure American college. Some Islamists are willing to engage in violent jihad to facilitate or speed up their dawa work, whether it be converting individuals or Islamising society. The ultimate aim of jihad is to impose Allah’s rule worldwide, and the practice can be supported theologically by certain interpretations of the Islamic sources. Violent jihad is by its nature very obvious and easy to spot. The majority of non-Muslims, whether ordinary citizens or senior government officials, are concerned only about violent jihadi activity; they do not recognise the non-violent conversion and Islamisation activities that permeate their societies. This lack of understanding and failure to recognise the substance and scope of the challenge, let alone the Islamic doctrines and strategies behind it, is not a matter of chance. In fact, disinformation and deception (taqiyya) are considered legitimate strategies in the Islamic cause, according to sharia and according also to the model of Islamic sacred history. There is a sense in which violent Islam should be somewhat less of a worry to those in Muslim-minority contexts than more subtle conversion and Islamisation activities, just because it is impossible not to notice. The more discreet tactics that form part of the overall Islamist endeavour to establish Islamic rule in every level of government and society throughout the world might be considered a greater cause for concern. Daniel Pipes, for one, a noted academic and commentator on Islam and the Middle East, argues that non-violent methods are more effective than violence and therefore that “non-violent Islamists pose a greater threat than the violent ones”.15 Whether the visible or the invisible is the more dangerous, there is no doubt that the three overlapping spheres of activity of contemporary Islamism – conversion, Islamisation and jihad – pose an urgent challenge. The advance of Islam within a society is very difficult to reverse by peaceful means. Islamists may utilise democratic methods to gain political power and then ban elections as un-Islamic. They may use freedom of speech to promote their viewpoint and then, having gained political power, pass laws to prohibit any criticism of what they are doing. Laws based on a common secular space, laws that enable religions to co-exist and be propagated freely by their respective missionaries, would not exist in an Islamised society. Sharia’s rules, compiled in the Middle Ages and unchanged since the 10th century, would not provide a level playing field and would not try to. Although derived from a religion, Islamism bears many of the hallmarks of a totalitarian ideology that drastically re-shapes society and then puts a complete stop on any further change. Of course, only a small percentage of Muslims are involved in the process described above. Like the majority of ordinary people in the world, most Muslims do not desire conflict but simply want to live out their lives in tranquillity. There are also Muslims who are liberal, progressive or secularist. Some interpret their...
