ISLAM’S ANTI-OSAMA

There is an ancient hadith or saying ascribed to Mohammed that goes:

The Prophet said, Peace be upon him: “O Allah, bless our Syria and our Yemen!” They said: “Ya Rasulallah, and our Najd!” He didn’t reply. He blessed Syria and Yemen twice more. They asked him to bless Najd twice more but he didn’t reply. The third time he said: “There [in Najd] are the earthquakes and the dissensions, and through it will dawn the epoch of Shaytan [Satan].”

As we discussed last week in The Soviet Saudi Union, Najd in central Arabia is the birthplace of Abdul Wahhab, the founder of Wahhabism, the fanatical sect of Saudi Jihadist Islam that provides the religious fuel for Moslem terrorism.

Wahhab elevated jihad — war upon infidels — to the supreme Moslem obligation. He did so using quotes from Sura (Chapter) 9 of the Koran:

Kill the infidels wherever you find them. Take them captive, besiege them, prepare an ambush for them (9:5).

Make war against those who have been given the Koran yet do not believe in Allah and do not forbid that which Allah has forbidden by his messenger (Mohammed) (9:29).

Wage war upon all the idolaters as they are waging war upon you (9:36).

If you do not fight (the unbelievers), Allah will afflict you with a painful doom (9:39).

Allah promises the hypocrites, both men and women, and the unbelievers the fire of hell for their abode. Allah curses them. Theirs is a lasting torment (9:68)

O Prophet! Fight against the unbelievers! Be harsh with them! Their ultimate abode is hell (9:73)

O ye who believe! Wage jihad upon those of the unbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you. Know that Allah is with those who keep their duty unto him (9:123).

As these verses, along with many others in the Koran, make clear, jihad means to fight, the real bloody fighting of war with real warriors with real swords engaged in battle to force anyone who doesn’t believe as they to do so or die. It does not, nor does the Koran ever use the word to mean “strive” or “go forth,” as certain dishonest English translations of the original Arabic claim.

The Koranic injunction of Jihad enabled the Wahhabis to create a totalitarian ideology with the aim of conquering the entire world, to create not merely a justification but the moral obligation for Moslems to be terrorists. It is the moral duty of Moslems, in the eyes of Wahhabis like Osama Bin Laden, to fight and kill in the name of Allah.

It is often claimed, especially by those who maintain that the war between Civilization and Moslem Terrorism is at root a “War of Ideas,” that we — America, the West, Civilization as a whole — are not at war with Islam, but the Jihadist interpretation of Islam; that our enemies are not any and all Moslems, but those “radical” or “fundamentalist” Moslems who have bought the Wahhabi-Jihadist version of Islam.

Such claims frequently come with the plea for an “Islamic Martin Luther” to lead an “Islamic Reformation” that would rescue Islam from medieval Jihadists. Yet there is no such Anti-Osama savior, and the pleas dissolve into hopeless and forlorn fantasy.

But then — maybe not. Maybe we don’t have to hope in vain for a leader of the Islamic Reformation to emerge someday in the distant future. Maybe the Anti-Osama is already here — and he lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Shaykh Hishan Kabbani is a small cherub with a boyish face, a perpetually cheerful expression, eyes full of twinkles, and a beard so long and white it looks glued on for a B movie. He looks ill-cast to be the Anti-Osama, but when he talks, one hundred million Moslems pay close attention. Particularly when he quotes the hadith at the beginning of this essay.

Shaykh Kabbani is the American leader of the largest worldwide order of Sufis (soo-fees), the People of the Platform named after disciples of Mohammed who met on the platform — suffe in Arabic — of the mosque at Medina. It was at this mosque that Islam was founded, according to its orthodox history, by Mohammed after his hegira or flight from Mecca in 622 AD, Year One in the Islamic calendar (specified AH, After Hegira, thus 2004 is 1425 AH).

Sufism, as an interpretation of Islam, is thus eleven centuries older than Wahhabism (Wahhab formed his alliance with Mohammed Ibn Saud in 1744). One of its principal founders was Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed and his first wife Khadija, one reason why respect for women is a Sufi tradition (many Sufi saints are women, as opposed to the Wahhabi view that women are sub-human).

It is a singular attribute of the Koran that it is the most contradictory scripture ever written. For just about any assertion made in one verse, you can find another verse that contradicts it. Verse 216 of Sura 2 tells Moslems, “Warfare is ordained for you” to force people to accept Islam. Yet just a little later in the same Sura we come upon the famous command of verse 256: “There must be no compulsion in religion.”

Like Marx, Engels, and Lenin, Mohammed did not accept the Law of Non-Contradiction as true of the basic nature of reality. To claim that of two contradictory statements at least one has to be false, or for one to be true the other must be false, would be to “put God in chains.” Thus for Moslems, both the command to wage war upon infidels and the command not to are both and equally true. You can take what you want. The Sufis chose the latter, the Wahhabis chose the former — so the first “infidels” the Wahhabis went after in the 1700s were the Sufis.

The interpretation of Sura 256 that all Moslems agreed upon was that the “no compulsion” applied to fellow Moslems. That is, if you rejected Islam you could, or even must, be forced to believe. But once you accepted Islam and its Five Pillars (Allah is the only god and Mohammed is his prophet, observe Ramadan, give alms, pray 5xday, make a pilgrimage to Mecca), then you can’t be compelled to believe in any particular sect of Islam. It’s for Allah to decide if you’ve been a good Moslem or not.

All Moslems agreed upon this, except, that is, the Wahhabis. Their contribution to Islamic thought is that any Moslem who isn’t a Wahhabi is not a true Moslem and just another infidel. Wahhab himself had a special hatred for Sufis with their saints and shrines, and declared them murtadd, apostates. Now, Shaykh Hishan Kabbani is going to return the favor.

The Naqshbandi Order of Sufis is the oldest and largest, with tens of millions of adherents worldwide. There are many millions of Naqshbandi Sufis in Indonesia alone. On October 10, 2003, Shaykh Kabbani held a prayer service at the Istiqal Mosque in Jakarta (the 3rd largest mosque in the world) preaching adherence to the Sufi principles of peace, tolerance and non-violence to an audience of over 100,000 that flowed out into the surrounding streets. (See the Naqshbandi website: www.naqshbandi.org/Events/SEAsia2003_2/Indonesia/10102003/default.htm.)

Shaykh Kabbani and his Sufi followers are convinced that the Wahhabi Jihadis, epitomized by Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, are a grave threat to all humanity, and to the Moslem religion. They have disgraced and shamed Islam in the eyes of the human race and in the eye of God. By claiming that all Moslems who disagree with them are apostates, they become non-Moslems themselves. Wahabbi-Jihadis are thus a cancer in the body of Islam which must be surgically removed before it metastasizes and threatens to kill off the Islamic faith.

Kabbani is now in the process of organizing a worldwide conference of Sufis, representing at least 100 and perhaps well over 200 million Moslems from scores of countries on six continents. The purpose of the conference will be to declare Wahhabism an Islamic heresy, and that Osama Bin Laden, together with all members of Al Qaeda and all others who engage or advocate terrorism in the name of Allah, are to be considered apostates and no longer members of the Islamic faith.

We often hear the claim by Moslem apologists that jihad simply means “struggle,” an inner struggle with one’s own imperfections. It is straightforward dishonest to claim this applies to traditional orthodox Islam — but it is true for Sufis, really true deep in their hearts and souls.

Just as Jesus advised the Pharisees to seek God in their hearts, not through the robotic repetition of religious laws and rules, so do the Sufis. Just as Jesus preached a philosophy of non-violence and benevolence, so do the Sufis. Sufism teaches that the path to Islamic enlightenment is not through compulsion of any kind, but through a personal ecstatic experience of the Divine.

We need look no further for a peaceful Islamic alternative to Jihad Islam. We need wait no longer for an Islamic Martin Luther. The Islamic Reformation is coming, led by Islam’s Anti-Osama, Shaykh Hashim Kabbani. He deserves all the support and assistance we can give him. You can find out more at www.naqshbandi.org.