Looking at suicide bombing/martyrdom operation – beyond political correctness

Looking at suicide bombing/martyrdom operation – beyond political correctness
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

In the concluding chapter of Ziauddin Sardar’s just recently published memoir, “Desperately seeking paradise – journeys of a sceptical muslim” (Granta Books, London 2004), a friend lamented at the intellectual and moral paralysis gripping the muslim world. In anger and despair, muslims are reduced to meeting the challenges of the modern world by summoning people to die for Islam. Ziauddin remarked “its time some of us demanded to live for Islam, unfashionable as that may sound. Martyrdom has its uses, but right now living for Islam takes more courage and more effort. You don’t have to think to offer yourself for death… But to live, you’re got to think all the unthinkables and face all the slings, arrows brickbats and siren songs of the entire gamut from the West to the Rest, from without and within, and then come up with a way forward worth traveling…”.

If there is anyone who has suffered the most vulgar of abuses and vicious denunciations in the media and in public, it is Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi, a scholarly figure widely regarded as the world’s chief proponent of moderate Islam. At a time when the confused and despairing muslims cheered the Al Qaeda suicide bombing of the Twin Towers, Qaradawi condemned the act as heinous crime. When the Taliban leader Mullah Omar decreed that the Buddha statues of Bamiyan be destroyed, Qaradawi was among a delegation of scholars who went to Afghanistan and counseled them against that decree, suggesting that they should instead “focus on fighting poverty, diseases, unemployment and bloodshed on their soil”. During his recent visit to London for a series of conferences, the influential and well connected zionist lobby and right-wing Islamophobes lobbied the government to bar his entry into Britain using over the top smear campaigns and media vilification, citing his endorsement of terrorism for his stand on Palestine. Sheikh Qaradawi has of course visited London on numerous occasions in the course of the past decades. His 3 daughters completed doctorates at British Universities and he is a trustee of the Oxford University Centre for Islamic Studies. The zionist lobby and friends of Israel, seeing that the muslims are at their lowest ebb, with the popular perception among westerners that Islam equates terrorism, anti-west and incompatible with modernity, pounced on the affable and gentle old man to make sure that muslims in Britain (and Europe) are prevented from integrating into and contributing meaningfully to mainstream society. The zionists cannot afford to have muslims integrate into the mainstream. They must be kept alienated at the margins, trapped in the ghettos with no possibility of good education and social mobility for their children. The zionists would try hard that the western public only hears their version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An alternative narrative of palestinians as victims of the victims, having their land stolen and expelled from their towns and villages to languish in abject misery in refugee camps for more than half-century and subjected to brutal, colonial policies of the Israeli occupation must not reach the ears of the western public at all cost. When he arrived in Britain the Sun called Qaradawi a “devil” and its headline read “The Evil Has Landed”. Some newspapers and parliamentarians from all parties have urged the government to deport Qaradawi, claiming that he supports terrorism and preaches race hate and intolerance. Labour MP for Liverpool, Louise Ellman, known for her staunch support for Israel, wrote a letter to Home Secretary Davie Blunkett urging the government to deny access to Qaradawi. During Prime Minister’s question time in the parliament, the Conservative leader, Michael Howard said that Qaradawi should have been prevented from entering the country. Even if muslims found themselves on the ropes, it was heartening to see that common sense prevailed in an atmosphere of openness and freedom of expression, unheard of in muslim nations, even if those who wield influence, money and connections with the powerful media and politicians exerted their weight in a vulgar manner. Credit most be given to Qaradawi’s hosts, the Muslim Association of Britain, whose leadership ranks consist of articulate and educated professionals, for its mature vision and balanced, moderate stance on many issues relating to Islam and Muslims especially after September 11. Furthermore, the zionist lobby cannot have the monopoly of the Israeli-Palestine conflict narrative forever. At the opening of a conference for Muslims in Europe at the Greater London Authority’s building, he shared a platform with the London Mayor, Ken Livingstone. Interestingly, apart from the Mayor, American Rabbi Yisroel David Weiss also defended Qaradawi against the attacks by the media, condemning the Zionist state as a perversion of true Judaism.

The London episode, discomforting and unpleasant as it was, served an object lesion for muslims. Prejudice against Islam is still very strong, even among mainstream politicians, and this is despite official calls for bridging the gap between muslims and the West, and for integrating ethnic minorities. The zionist lobby and islamophobes will take every opportunity to exploit the western public’s ignorance of Islam to perpetuate this prejudice so that Israel can do anything she wants. But the answer to that is more efforts towards engagement and integration with mainstream society, something that muslims are beginning to appreciate, rather than retreating into the ghettos in anger and frustration, into the arms of Al Qaeda recruiting agents.

And the zionists never sleep – they will scrutinize every statement and gesture to pin us down onto that catch-all, convenient label of “supporter of terrorism”. For all of Qaradawi’s positive pronouncements on the need for dialogue and interaction with the west and non muslims, his categorical condemnation of the September 11 attack, Bali bombing and those in Riyadh and Casablanca, his detractors managed to get the mud to stick on 1 issue – the Palestine suicide bomber. Indeed, this is an issue that muslims must examine thoroughly, yet find it difficult to debate especially when a scholar of Sheikh Qaradawi’s stature has issued a fatwa (religious edict) that “suicide attack” against Israel are licit and that they should be called “martyrdom operation”. In defence of Qaradawi, Sohaib Saeed argued that “A question such as that over the rights and wrongs of suicide-bombing in Palestine can legitimately be approached from different angles. A jurist like Mr. Qaradawi is required to draw conclusions about its status within Islamic law – his comments are made in the context of a debate about the interpretative of Islamic texts” (If Qaradawi is an extremist, who is left? – the Guardian, July 9, 2004). Still, with all the respect for Sheikh Qaradawi as an eminent scholar, there is an element of human fallibility, as in all matters of interpretation, especially when the modern context of Israeli-Palestine conflict has no precedence in the classical texts. Have all angles and the role of reason been exhausted, and what is the impact on the wider picture of the Palestinian struggle for justice? While Sheikh Qaradawi and the mainstream, traditional Islamic scholars are unanimous in condemning acts of terrorism on unarmed, innocent civilians are heinous crimes in Islam, the case of suicide attacks against Israel are different. In an interview by Gilles Keppel, Sheikh Qaradawi’s argument was that Israel is a Muslim land (Dar al Islam) taken over by the zionists. It was therefore legitimate to wage jihad to reclaim it. Moreover, Israelis are not civilians, because all citizens are drafted into the army, even if they are in civilian clothes (Tightrope walks and chessboards : an interview with Gilles Keppel, Open Democracy 14 April 2003). The rules of engagement during war with regards to women, children, the old and infirm (non-combattants), religious sanctuaries, plants, animals and water sources have been clearly spelled in Islam, based on the prophetic traditions. The argument that the entire Israeli society is militarized and that they are colonizers, and therefore fair target for “martyrdom operations” is problematic. The most obvious thing concerns Israeli children. Even if they have been indoctrinated to hate arabs and consider them subhuman, they cannot choose where they want to be born, have no capacity to be conscientious objects and have no means of leaving Israel. In fact the same goes for adult Israelis who become its citizens by accident of birth, yet deplore the colonial policies of Israel and sympathize with the arabs, however small may be their number.

Many sympathizers of the Palestinian cause can readily understand why arab teenagers are driven to blowing themselves up in buses and restaurants – chiefly the unspeakable despair, frustration, and desperation of life under Israeli occupation and an uncomphending, indifferent world, coupled with religious notions of sacrifice. Understanding the phenomenon is one thing but giving it moral legitimacy is another, let alone accord it religious sanction. In a post September 11 world where “terrorism” has becomes the catch-all phrase to conveniently isolate and denounce the slightest challenge or grievance against the US hegemony, to whose coat tails Israel tightly clings, it demands Muslims to be extremely careful in our stand on issue like this – an over cautions political correctness if we like. But I think its worth the trouble. Unfair in the extreme we may complain, but the world’s judgement on the legitimacy or otherwise of the Palestinian struggle today appears to hinge only on one thing – the suicide bombers, the Archilles heel of the Palestinian struggle. Everything that is legitimate about the struggle – the quest for dignity and respect as a people, a truly sovereign state, right of return/compensation for what happened in 1948, the rights to Jerusalem etc, are wiped out by these acts of desperation, and it has to be admitted that targeting children in buses is revolting to the civilized world. Conversely, Israeli’s oppressive colonial policies, state terrorism, and destruction of Palestinian society are given tacit approval or grudgingly accepted as justifiable on the basis of tit for tat moral equivalency. For the few Israelis killed by suicide bombers, the reprisals and repression visited on the Palestinians are many times over in terms of loss of life and property, and worse, the rapid depletion of its leadership ranks. Maxime Rodinson, the distinguished French orientalist and long time supporter the Palestinian struggle who died just recently (May 2004) once wrote that Israel more or less tells the arab world in a clear and simple language, “We are here because we are the strongest. We will remain here because we will remain the strongest, wether you like it or not. And we will always remain the strongest, thanks to our friends in the developed world. It is up to you to draw your conclusions, to recognize your defeat and weakness, and to accept us as we are on the land that we have taken” (from “Vivre avec les Arabes”, written by Rodinson for the Le Monde in June 1967 just before the 6 day war, republished in the July 2004 issue of Le Monde Diplomatique).

Clearly, suicide bombing/martyrdom operation is too feeble to confront the Israeli military might, and the backlash against it too costly to be a viable strategy for the Palestinian struggle for justice, regardless that eminent scholars have given it a religious sanction, although I feel it still deserves further debate within the muslim ummah.

Beyond political correctness, today’s climate demands exceptional moral scrupulousness on the part of muslims if we need the solidarity of the world’s public on the issue of Palestine, which at present remains stifled by the revulsion towards suicide bombings. Sustaining its moral legitimacy seems to be the only way out, no matter how slow and painful the process may take.

Returning to Ziauddin Sardar, perhaps it is time that we ask muslims live for Islam, a much more difficult thing to do than its opposite.