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Samuel B. Griffith's Cold War translation of the Art of War
in 1960, he approvingly quotes Xundze that the first fundamental
factor in war is "moral influence." To win the Cold War,
the United States led the free world not only by opposing Communism
as an ideology but also by constantly promoting an alternative way
for those beyond the Iron Curtain to live, as free Russians
and Poles, etc .
But we don't
talk thus to Muslims. Blandly mumbling of a "religion of peace,"
the Bush administration shows no clue that we face a theological
struggle as much as a military one, that what we mean by "Islam"
will be as decisive as what we meant by Communism. (Just this yesterday,
in fact, Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a speech: "We're
not fighting a religious war. We're fighting a freedom war.")
Defense Department think tanks are actually prohibited from studying
the national-security implications of religion, which "takes
off the table just the topic that militant Islam finds most compelling,"
says Jack Miles, who won the Pulitzer Prize for God: A Biography.
"One can no more discuss (Islam and terrorism) without discussing
theology than one can discuss communism without discussing ideology."
Thus, the flaw
in the speechwriter's phrase, "axis of evil." The only
ideology Iraq, Iran, and North Korea have in common is that they
wish us harm — but Hamas and Hezbollah, al Qaeda and the ayatollahs
share much theology.
Is radical
Islam's theology definitely Islam at the root? Attorney General
Ashcroft thinks so: "Islam is a religion in which God requires
you to send your son to die for him," he said to columnist
Cal Thomas last fall, as one Christian to another. "Christianity
is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you."
This theological
dimension of the Bush administration's war on terrorism shows we
are in deeper trouble than even the Saudi alliance suggests. Ashcroft
is an example of a "Muslim fundamentalist without being a Muslim,"
in the phrase of UCLA law professor Khaled Abou al-Fadl. For America's
leadership to agree with bin Laden and Hamas on the meaning of Islam,
is as if Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan had accepted the class struggle
theory of history. But where is the alternative to the suicidal
theology that is the only Islam our attorney general sees?
Switzerland.
Tariq Ramadan
teaches Islam at two prestigious European universities, in Geneva
and Friboug. Forty years old, his many books focus on the growing
Muslim communities in the West, particularly Europe. To Be a
European Muslim, his first in English, boldly asks what the
Bush administration won't: "Early in Islamic history …(jurists
ruled that) it was not possible for Muslims to live (outside of
Muslim-ruled states) except under some mitigating circumstances.
What bearing does this have on those Muslims who came to work and
are now living in the West with their families? What about their
children and their nationality? Can they… be true, genuine,
and complete citizens, giving allegiance — through the national
constitution — to a non-Islamic country?"
Ramadan is
important for many reasons — including that his grandfather,
Hassan al-Banna, founded the Muslim Brotherhood. But the Swiss Islamicist
is sharply critical of reactionary Islam, especially Wahhabi influence
from Saudi Arabia — a "catastrophe." He might be
the Muslim Martin Luther — but he is not medieval.
Ramadan draws
graphs: This thoroughly modern thinker illustrates the dynamics
of faith in a matrix with one axis "to be a Muslim," and
the other "how to act" like one. Without a clergy (particularly
for Sunnis, the vast majority), Muslims individually choose what
is, and is not Islamic.
Ramadan's matrix
has depth and nuance, which many Islamicists lack: What is most
Muslim is simply what is least Western. (One scholar refused to
eat with a fork, another to try watermelon, since there is no evidence
the Prophet did either.) Islamic experts acknowledge Ramadan is
a wholly orthodox thinker with innovative, even revolutionary conclusions.
(He uses forks.)
Perhaps the
most important of Ramadan's innovations (reviving a neglected tradition)
is his attack on the concept of Dar al-Islam, the House of Submission
that has come to replace Islam itself, perpetually confronted by
Dar al-Harb, the House of War, the unbelievers: us. "The concept
of Dar al-Islam is a hindrance today," he explains, supposedly
the Islamic world "where the rules of Islam are implemented,
which is not the reality for the majority of the people who are
speaking about Dar al-Islam."
Ramadan courageously
answers the fundamentally theological question how it is
possible to be a Muslim and remain a citizen of any nation.
Citizenship
is an American invention. In 1776 all nations had subjects, most
with a religious character. If the attorney general's concept of
religion does not allow Muslims to be citizens, he ought to say
so. But if he recognizes that Muslims can be patriotic U.S. citizens,
he apparently unconsciously, and certainly inarticulately believes
in the Dar al-Islam that Ramadan is proclaiming publicly. "Dar
al-Islam is the space where we are at peace, where we are safe,"
says Ramadan. "Am I not in a safer place, in the West, than
in the majority of the so-called Islamic countries experiencing
dictatorship?"
Thus politically
transcending the us vs. them ideology-crippling Islam, Ramadan proposes
replacing Dar al-Islam with a "House of Witness," for
Muslims everywhere. He cites the Koran requiring Muslims "to
compete with the unbelievers in doing good works," bearing
witness to Islam's moral force that Ashcroft finds so alien.
If that moral
force is not with us, as the president said, it will be against
us, as Ashcroft believes. The Art of War urges reminding
Muslims that Allah is on our side, and Ramadan shows us how.
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