Complex Martyrs
Following Islam's Fundamentalists
by Jonathan Torop
Reprinted from the New York Times
May 5, 1996
Judith Miller sets the tone of "God Has Ninety-nine Names:
Reporting From a Militant Middle East" with an execution in Sudan.
Arriving at the killing (in the back seat of a car -- "the correct
place to be for a woman in much of the Middle East"), Ms. Miller, a
New York Times special correspondent during the Gulf War, watches the
hanging of a Sudanese "apostate," Mahmoud Taha, as thousands of
cheering spectators wave Korans. "Whereas Taha's execution was
exceptional in 1985 in Sudan," writes Ms. Miller, "thousands of
men and women in that country and throughout the region have since been
killed for their ideas in the name of Allah, and the killing goes
on." "God Has Ninety-nine Names" is a brilliant, troubling
study of militant Islam, describing in 10 chapters the author's travels in
Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Algeria, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel
and Iran. Bringing together interviews with political leaders, radical
clerics and assorted intellectuals, Ms. Miller describes a region where
militant Islam is successfully challenging the bankrupt ideologies of the
past -- especially pan-Arab nationalism -- with disastrous results.
Ms. Miller artfully leads the reader through a world where the families
of suicide bombers in the West Bank and Gaza serve mourners sweet coffee
-- a drink reserved by Arabs for the happiest of occasions; where
exuberant men hug and kiss one another after the killing of Taha, the
Sudanese heretic; where an Iranian kindergarten teacher working in Lebanon
marches his charges "up and down a small hill like soldiers, wielding
wooden sticks like rifles" while telling Ms. Miller "They are
playing martyr. When they are older, they may have the honor of dying for
Islam." A former Cairo bureau chief for the New York Times, Ms Miller
is perhaps best when writing about Egypt, a place where exists
"somewhere between laughter and tears." Egypt's response to the
rise in fundamentalism -- state-sponsored mosques and clerics whose fatwas
and speeches resemble the pronouncements of anti-government
fundamentalists -- typifies the dangerous game Arab countries often play
to fend off militant Islam. The strategy is one that Ms Miller rightly
feels can only end badly for the Egyptian people and their leaders.
Egypt's shortcomings are indeed disturbing -- the anti-Semitism of its
official and unofficial press; the hostility of the government and various
professional guilds to normalization with Israel; the inability of the Mubarak
regime to provide for its poorest citizens. Meanwhile, the "pockets
of intellectual brilliance that were keys to [Egypt's] salvation" --
were, in the words of Fouad Ajami, "either beaten down by the stick
or seduced by the carrot." Other intellectuals, Ms. Miller points
out, were injured or killed by Islamic militants. For example,
fundamentalists killed the writer Farag Foda in 1992 after "he mocked
what passed for intellectual discourse among Islamists by citing a recent
sermon by Egypt's most popular preacher... [who told his followers] that
Muslims who entered paradise would enjoy eternal erections and the company
of young boys draped in earrings and necklaces." Shortly after Foda's
murder, fundamentalists gravely wounded Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt's
octogenarian (and secular) Nobel laureate in Literature.
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"God Has Ninety-nine Names" documents the level of intolerance displayed by Egyptian Islamists -- and by most of that country's intellectuals -- toward Jews. The rare author who ventures to Israel is expelled by the country's writers guild and denounced in the press; the opening movie of Egypt's 1994 film festival is anti-Semitic; the festival's director brags about having banned "Schindler's List" from Egyptian movie screens (a movie about the "alleged Holocaust massacre," note the English language Egyptian Gazette); and newspaper cartoons picture hook-nosed Jews, hands dripping with blood. Of course, intolerance is not purely directed toward external "enemies": Islamic violence against Egypt's 6 to 8 million Christian Copts (about 10% of the population) has driven a million Copts to emigrate. At the same time, Islamist teachers have "quietly infiltrated entire school districts. Whereas Islamic tradition required girls to cover their heads only after puberty, radical teachers now require girls as young as six to wear the hijab. Instead of teaching from government texts, the teachers play cassettes of incendiary sermons by militant Islamic superstars" -- including Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing. Ms. Miller's reportage details an obsession with the seductive power of women -- and sex -- among religious Muslims that is instructive in understanding the nature of fundamentalist Islam. Ms. Miller offers numerous examples: a Jordanian education minister demanding the segregation of boys and girls in classrooms and prohibiting fathers "from attending their daughters' athletic competitions on grounds that they should not see their daughter's school chums immodestly dressed"; during the Intifada, Hamas activists killing "prostitutes" -- women in slacks; a leading Saudi theologian ruling "unveiled women" are "one of the great evils and patent sins" and a leading cause of "general depravity"; government officials banning photographs of women in Saudi Newspapers.
Because militant Islam is essentially a totalitarian movement that attempts to control all aspects of an adherent's actions, perhaps sexual desire threatens the attempts by religious leaders to control all aspects of their follower's lives. Not surprisingly, an Algerian woman tells Ms. Miller, "I keep wondering, who are these Islamic 'moderates' that Western academics keep talking about? There are none when it comes to women." Ms Miller defers to historian Bernard Lewis on this question -- Mr. Lewis, Ms. Miller says, "puts it this way: 'Moderation,' or 'pragmatism,' in a radical fundamentalist movement usually reflects a lack of alternatives. An Islamic 'moderate,' [Lewis] quoted Arab friends as saying was one who had 'run out of ammunition.'" Ms. Miller's examination of the philosophical roots of fundamentalist Islam reveals similarities among all militant Muslim groups. Certainly, Islamists across the Middle East believe in the inevitable triumph of radical Islam. As Hasan Turabi, the power behind Sudan's fundamentalist government tells Ms. Miller in Khartoum: "Islam can no longer be denied! It is the only force that motivates young people in the developing world. ...You had better get used to it. ...Islam is the future. You won't be able to stop it. ...Objectively, the future is ours." Ms. Miller comments, "Islamic fundamentalism and Communism [are] after all, expressions of the same human desire for perfection on earth. ...And both [are] committed to imposing their own utopian vision by force, if necessary." Like most ideologues, communist, fascist or otherwise, Islamic fundamentalists make no effort to disguise their goals. "The true ideological father of modern Islamic militancy," Ms. Miller tells us, is an Egyptian named Sayyid Qutb, author of "Signposts on the Road" -- "An Islamists version of Lenin's 'What Is to Be Done?'" Muslims, Qutb wrote, have a responsibility to overthrow their pseudo-Muslim leaders by force. Fundamentalists from across the Middle East also share a hatred of the West. The poster boy for this school of thought could by Sayyid Qutb -- who, interestingly, traveled extensively in the United States. Qutb believed that the West is "a synthetic civilization of materialism and sexual depravity" in "civilizational decline similar to the fall of ancient Rome."
Not that Ms. Miller believes that Islamic extremism is a modern
political phenomenon. She frequently refers to the ancient, mainstream
Islamic idea of "the House of Islam" and "the House of
War," a distinction that allows all manner of violence by Muslims
against non-believers. In the late 20th century, though, this idea has
gained a central place in radical Islamic thinking. "Every pious
Muslim," explains Ms. Miller, quoting militant thinkers, is
"religiously obliged to wage a jihad against [non-Muslim] societies.
If fundamentalist ideology is so uncompromising and pervasive, what is the
chance of Arab-Israeli reconciliation? Of American alliances with the Arab
and Iranian regimes of the future? What happened to Shimon Peres' dream of
a "New Middle East" -- a region of economic and political
cooperation? In Islam, God has 99 names and in the Middle East, it seems
that moderation is not among them.
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