Fundamentalist footnotes

Finding accurate words for Islam comes hard to Western academics. Less than half a century ago, the great English scholar H.A.R. Gibb still called this faith and its culture “Mohammedanism.” More recently “Muslim fundamentalism” has tripped glibly off expert tongues.

Both are misnomers. “Moham-medanism” was coined in fear, disdain, and ignorance by medieval Christendom. For Muslims it represents a misplaced emphasis on the Prophet, tantamount to blasphemy. God – al-lah (The One) – is at the center of Islam, and only God is divine. Mohammed, no matter how virtuous and exemplary, ranks as merely human. To equate that remarkable man (or anything else) with Allah violates Islam’s basic tenet of rigorously exclusive monotheism: “There is no God but God. …” Any effort to extend Divinity as a category, to include or affiliate anything else with Allah, is condemned as shirk (false “association”) and constitutes the worst of Muslim sins.

Western talk of “Muslim fundamentalism” is likewise misleading – for reasons less serious and more complicated. Less serious because, unlike “Mohammedanism,” its use is not regarded by Muslims as sinful. More complicated because of how Muslims regard their fundamentals.

Such fine points often best left to footnotes. Here we foreground them for a newly compelling reason: Now that Communism and class struggle have failed (at least for the moment), Islam poses the only world-class alternative to the our own agressively expanding fundamentals: secularism, materialism, capitalism, and individualism – all expressed politically in the form of more or less democratic nation-states.

This Western-generated package is being snapped up around the globe – across oceans, deserts, mountains, brutal dictatorships and great gaps between poverty and wealth. Where its widespread consumption – and frequent bouts of indigestion – will lead our species remains an open question. Meanwhile Islam is the only other name brand left on the shelf. We should, at the very least, know its ingredients.

The term “Muslim fundamentalism” is seldom used by Muslims themselves. And often resented by them when applied to extremists like al-Qaeda. Why? Because, strictly speaking, all Muslims believe deeply in the same fundamentals. Thus, Muslims say, “fundamentalist” fails to distinguish one group from another.

These fundamentals are set forth in the Qur’an, many of whose star characters also appear in the Bible. But don’t be fooled by casting duplications. The two Good Books are quite different documents, most of all in terms of what they purport to be. At issue: What’s meant by “The Word of God”?

While some Christian sects call any Biblical text “the Word of God,” clearly the phrase is meant figuratively. In fact, as Christians overwhelmingly agree, most words in the Bible were authored by humans. By Luke, for instance, or Ruth or Mark or Isaiah. True, these accounts contain words attributed to God, supposedly direct quotes from Divinity. But the books of the Bible were ultimately put together – edited and narrated – by men and women.

And so, as a human product, the Bible is more or less open to interpretation. Christian fundamentalists stress a literal adherence to the text. For instance: A) The cosmos really was created in six days, and B) Adam and Eve really were the progenitors of us all. And the fact that A and B are two utterly different accounts of creation, derived from two different oral traditions, does not prevent the simultaneous acceptance of both by True Believers. (Read for yourself the discontinuity between verses three and four in the second chapter of Genesis.)

Many other Christians – non-fundamentalists – believe in different segments of the Bible at different levels: literal here, more symbolic or thematic there. Scripture’s human authorship allows for such variation. Was Jonah really swallowed by a whale? Or is the story just allegorical? Individuals can decide their own level of belief – because the text was written by other human individuals.

Not so the Qur’an, which Muslims call the central miracle of Islam. Their belief: That the entire text – all 114 chapters consisting of 6000-plus verses of matchless Arabic poetry – is, literally, the Word of God. The text, Muslims believe, has always existed on a golden tablet (called the Mother of Scriptures) in heaven. Revelations occurred before the time of Mohammed, but these were always partial and/or imperfectly transcribed. Thus the need for a final revelation. God chose Mohammed as the pure human recipient despite (or perhaps because of) the former camel drover’s illiteracy.

God’s agent was the archangel Gibrail (Gabriel) who first appeared when Mohammed was 40. This Voice continued to come, unpredictably and overwhelmingly, until the Prophet died 22 years later. Unlike the Christian Gospels, there was no lag time in transcription. Syllable by syllable, Muslims believe, God’s Word was written down immediately by Mohammed’s followers. And so, unlike the Bible, every bit of the Qur’an is held to be divine in origin. Furthermore, since it’s the final revelation, every bit is forever unchangeable.

Thus Muslims have little choice. To be truly Muslim, they must believe that the Qur’an is God’s Word, that it represents literal Truth, and that this Truth is immutable. Isn’t that “fundamentalism”?

It is, and hence this remark (more clarification than admission) from a Muslim acquaintance: ‘You Westerners talk of the terrorists as “Muslim fundamentalists.” All Muslims, technically, are fundamentalists. That phrase gets us nowhere. The important thing to recognize is that only a tiny fraction of Muslims are terrorists.

Absolutely true – and worthy of frequent repetition in the face of Christian fundamentalist slurs on Islam. Gradually our discourse is opting for less loaded terms like “Islamists” for neo-conservative Muslims bent on re-structuring all society along literalist Qur’anic lines. And yes: The most militant Islamists – al-Qaeda a prime example – do warrant the epithet “terrorist.” Thank God – the God of all faiths – that terrorist numbers are so small.

But there’s still a nagging concern, raised here with great respect and the hope that I’m wrong. My Muslim friends – many, valued, and in most cases “moderate” – seem to me in a difficult fundamentalist bind: 1) Being Muslim means believing in “no God but God”; 2) God’s Will for humans is explicitly revealed in the Qur’an; 3) Qur’anic dictates, being the literal Word of God, are un-negotiable and unalterable; 4) Some of these dictates do call – verbatim – for much of what the neo-con Islamists now demand.

Many Muslims wrestle hard with this bind. I admire their constructive effort, even when it puts them in contorted positions. Last week’s column elicited a response from one young Afghan whose excellent mind struggles, in effect, to have things both ways. He strives to reconcile democracy with (peaceful) Islamist rule. “Whose democracy?” he asks and then speaks of “culturally relative” variants. I’m impressed … and reminded of a concept called “theo-democracy,” torturously argued by a Muslim intellectual in India more than a century ago.

Three responses to this useful critique: First and frankly, I still can’t think how theocracy (rule by God’s representatives according to God’s changeless dictates) can go together with democracy (rule by the people via their periodically elected representatives according to changing circumstances). Key question: At what point do the theocrats, even if democratically elected in the first place, submit themselves to human re-election?

Second, perhaps I lack imagination. After all, Iran has been experimenting at the nexus of theology and democracy for more than twenty years. Perhaps, rather than brand it “evil,” we should wish Iran well in that quest.

Third, my young Muslim friend, struggles such as yours – with ideas rather than bullets – represent the best hope for all of us to escape our respective binds.

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world. He was last in Afghanistan in May on a U.S. government contract.