Our world is in trouble. A big portion of the human population is following a culture whose mainstream is dominated by some very bad ideas. The Muslim world is heavily influenced by a stream of thought synonymous with terrorism, sabotage, ignorance, anti-Semitism, the oppression of women, aggressive homophobia, sexual repression, hostility to free inquiry and human rights.
There are 13 countries in the world where you can get the death penalty for apostasy; all of them are Muslim-majority countries. Most other Muslim countries imprison apostates. Most countries with astonishing records of violence against women, terrorism exporting and financing, anti-Semitism and hostility to free expression are Muslim-majority countries. Even Europe, the birthplace of modern Western intellectuality and civilization, is not spared from this sea of darkness. Cartoonists, authors and academics frequently need the protection of law enforcement agencies because of the abundance of death threats and fatwas against them. Many of them have experienced assassination attempts, and many did not survive. The biggest demonstrations organized by European Muslims are not to condemn these atrocities but to raise signs like, “Behead those who insult the prophet,” or more moderately, “You are not free to insult the prophet.” Think about this for a moment: There are large numbers of people who actively and violently want to destroy our right to freedom of expression. Some of them are more than ready to lose their lives in order to shut us up. Europe is very quickly being hijacked.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a 57-member bloc of countries, has often proposed a U.N. resolution criminalizing the defamation of religion. In March 2012, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a resolution titled “Combating defamation of religions,” which is basically a blasphemy law with 20 members voting in favor, 17 members voting against and eight abstaining. The Muslim world is trying to internationally criminalize any criticism of religion, even in our own non-Muslim Western homes. Even those we label “moderate Muslims” are attacking our way of life — though not with bombs — with every intention to destroy it.
CNN has blurred images of cartoons so as not to provoke Muslim hostility. The White House officially requested from Google that it remove a Muhammad parody video. The president of the United States has had to take it upon himself to praise the Muslim faith and culture on almost every occasion. Fear and intimidation are taking over our most reputable academic institutions, and the threat of violence is successfully blocking free inquiry. Christians are slain, women enslaved, homosexuals executed, atheists imprisoned, Jews murdered, young girls kidnapped, buildings blown up, diplomats slaughtered and journalists killed as part of this global ideological movement. The biggest superpower in human history has been spending countless precious materials and human resources for the past 20 years to counter this dark force. The United States has spent approximately $4.4 trillion from 2001 through 2014 on terrorism-related wars. This number does not include other non-Department of Defense counterterrorism-related budgets like homeland security. The number of people losing their lives daily is steadily increasing. In short, we are in trouble.
Islamic fundamentalism is one of the toughest challenges in human history. There are 1.5 billion Muslims. The mainstream of this culture is subject to very aggressive, inhumane religious fantasies. Maybe we do not know what to do, but we know what not to do:
We can’t convince hundreds of millions to abandon their ideas and values overnight, and we can’t convert them to modernity at gunpoint. These are not moral points but practical ones. We do not possess the capacity to achieve such drastically rapid change. The failed $2 trillion social experiment the U.S. conducted in Iraq should serve as an example.
We can’t compromise our freedoms. How do we expect to convince others with our values when we are the first to abandon them? Cowardliness does not set a good example. There is a shameful record of Western incidents in which people, intimidated by religious fascism, decided to side with the devil. This record stretches from calls in the U.K. to turn Salman Rushdie over to Iran, the White House request to take down a video from YouTube and even to condemnations of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. Those shameful acts serve nothing but the morale of fascist totalitarian Muslims. Giving up our values of liberty and freedom is not an acceptable solution, and it is not up to our political institutions or media outlets to decide.
We can’t offer Muslims our own Westernized version of reformed Islam. We often see initiatives from moderate Muslims or ex-Muslims in the West to start a reform movement within Islam. We have seen attempts offering main reform areas, such as the new suggestion by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and we have seen other attempts go as far as rewriting the Quran. Needless to say, most such initiatives come from the West and are by either non-Muslims or ex-Muslims. The Muslim world is deeply convinced that the West is conspiring to destroy the house of Islam; any Western reform attempt will be viewed as a vigorous attack on Islam. Muslim masses will always be hostile to anything coming from the infidel West, let alone the fact that Islam itself is a very schismatic religion hostile to change. The massive numbers of Islamic reformers living in Western exile should make us understand how tough such a process is. Another important point is that the Muslim world needs to intellectually and socially evolve in order to produce freedom, liberty, human dignity and equality on its own. Otherwise it is unlikely Muslim societies will commit to values not embedded in the foundations of their social and cultural fabrics.
We should be courageous and rational enough to acknowledge that any realistic solution must be a long-term generational one and heavily dependent on education. It is my opinion that this solution does not only start in the house of Islam, but also in the “infidel West.”
So, what must be done?
Redefine free speech.
Criminalize the teaching and preaching of radical Islam and the depriving of fundamentalism from any legal protection.
Recent studies show that radicalism is much more common in Muslims born in Britain than in Muslims who immigrate to the U.K., Muslims born in the U.K. have zero tolerance to homosexuality, 20 percent of Muslims in the U.K. openly sympathize with the July 7, 2005, London terrorist attacks, and 25 percent of British Muslims don’t think that a Muslim has an obligation to report terrorists to police. The unspoken truth is that we know it is not the case just in the U.K. but in almost all of Western Europe. Terrorists are now born and raised in France, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and other European countries, as well as in England and Canada. The term “Muslim no-go zone” is a well-known term in Europe that describes semi-autonomous Muslim areas; some of them even have gang-imposed Shariah. All of this should make one thing very clear: The war on fundamentalist Islam starts at home.
A half-century ago, Europe decided to adopt a pluralistic, multicultural image to society. With absolutely good intentions, Europeans decided to adopt a suicidal, empty-headed multiculturalism with unmatched state benefits, wide immigration doors, and extremely tolerant policies toward ethnic and religious education. With no real supervision or assimilation policies, Europe has managed to attract unskilled workers from very poor Muslim countries, then helped them establish ghetto pockets and called for the Saudis to sponsor extremist, radical, hateful and pure evil mosques and schools. The result is no less than a catastrophe.
As a person who was born and raised in a conservative Muslim country — Egypt — where you can go to prison for blasphemy or homosexuality, let me tell you that I have met European Muslims who are much more extreme than many people who are legally considered terrorists in my home country.
Last year, the British government started taking serious measures to “force” all schools to teach British values after they found out some schools had been taken over by Islamists. I’m shocked that it took so long to realize what is going on in Islamic religious schools. There is a difference between teaching the history of Islamic conquests in a history class and teaching it in a religion class.
This is a very late move after decades of suicidal multicultural policies, and I do not think it will actually solve anything. The more appropriate move would be to shut down such schools and send the Muslim children to study with their infidel colleagues.
We all know that freedom and democracy do not work within Muslim communities, yet we have never tried to sincerely find out why. We need to ask ourselves some very sincere questions: Why do freedoms not work out well with Muslims? Why is it that when Muslim nations get a glimpse of democracy, the first thing they do is elect its enemies? These are serious facts and questions we have neglected to address. Many Muslims use their freedoms in their attempts to destroy civilization, and I believe the solution to radical Islam depends on dealing with this fact.
Since mankind has stepped out of the darkness of theocracy and feudalism, we have taken pride in our modern values. We take pride in our liberty, our freedom and our rights. We take pride in freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of speech and all civil liberties, which we hold now as an absolute right of birth. But maybe it is about time to start re-evaluating and redefining these values. Our strong advocacy for democracy and freedom is based upon the cornerstone belief that whenever people are faced with choices, they will naturally choose the most good. But what if a population is in the habit of making some very bad and evil choices? You then are faced with a reality where you have no option but to eliminate either their freedom or the bad choices altogether. The third option would be to watch the world as it burns.
In one country, if a holy man were to call upon the believers to fight those who insult Jesus, the result would be be a mix of ridicule, public humiliation and material for comedy shows. In another country, a similar incident results in huge riots, diplomatic crises, economic turmoil, assassinations and bloodshed. The extremely distinct consequences of both actions should be the determinate factor of what should be protected speech and what should not.
Free speech works just fine in the first example, but in the second it is quite destructive. This is a very practical and accurate conclusion, and it should force us to re-examine and reshape our understanding of freedom. This is not a “moral relativity” argument about a certain value in a different cultural context. Rather, I want to ask the question: Should all speech be protected as free speech? Should every religious fascination be protected as freedom of religion? What if they cause suffering and pain for humanity? Aren’t we wise enough now to make the decision to prohibit speech that we all know will lead to destruction? Is avoiding a confrontation with our own ideology worth losing innocent lives and jeopardizing our way of life?
If, beyond reasonable doubt, a certain education, certain speech and certain religious beliefs lead their adherents to commit crimes against humanity, wouldn’t it be necessary to criminalize such a culture? If so, why don’t we criminalize radical Islam? We should know that we are mature enough to decide which ideas are not worthy of protection. Our next step of moral evolution is to choose which ideas we want to eliminate. Humans actively try to eliminate several living organisms known to be harmful to human life, such as viruses and harmful bacteria. We give ourselves the right to interfere with nature and deprive other life forms of life. Why do we not do the same with harmful ideas?
We need to be confident in ourselves and in our morality. We have reached a point where our own respect for religious doctrines has become a failure to realize the purpose of our values. Our values are meant to preserve the well-being of our society, to help us pursue happiness and eliminate our pains and miseries. We went great distances to protect ourselves from actions that compromise our happiness or contribute to our misery. We outlawed harassment, sexual assault, hate crimes, bullying, etc. However, we are willing to let people go for any crime the moment they claim their actions are based on religious beliefs. When did we become so dull? How did we become so cynical of our own moral intuition? We should agree to deprive people of the right to be religious maniacs. Modern society no longer can afford that luxury. In order to do this, we have to be confident in our own morality: Homophobia is bad, anti-Semitism is bad, sexism is bad, oppression of women is bad, religious bias is bad, and hatred is evil. I’m not saying we should impose a certain worldview or moral standard on others, but rather that we should prohibit what we know to be evil moral views. An immigrant family should not be allowed to send its children to Saudi-sponsored Shariah schools, but to nonaffiliated schools, where their children get to sit with all kinds of children.
Make no mistake. If supervising mosques and religion classes is what it takes, then I’m for it. We have to outlaw the teaching of intolerance and hate, and of women being in any way inferior to men. Outlaw the teaching of homophobia and anti-Semitism, and of glorifying religious-based violence. This will definitely clash with other religious groups, but don’t you agree it is time?
Confront both Iran and Saudi Arabia. Reconcile Sunnis and Shias and end the Muslim civil war.
Islam is a very schismatic religion, and it is inconceivable that we can moderate and de-radicalize the Muslim world while it is having at least one major civil war between the two main components of Islam. Muslims will never believe in tolerance toward infidels and Jews if they can’t even tolerate their fellow Muslims. Muslims can never believe in coexistence with non-Muslims while they are slaughtering one another all over the Middle East.
As you read this, the current state of war between the Shias and the Sunnis is on the edge of escalating to a nuclear arms race. This is the biggest danger of Islam at the moment — not the war on the West. Our world as we know it may end in a nuclear war because Sunnis and Shias can’t agree on whether to wear a white robe or a black one. We need to start a massive international campaign to reconcile those two camps and offer them all possible assistance to end their fighting. Status quo coexistence between Shias and Sunnis will force Islamic scholars and theologians to break ground and establish some theological foundation to coexistence. It also will force the states and the politicians to adopt some secular, nonsectarian traditions in legislation. This coexistence, hopefully, may later include non-Muslims as well. The road to “I do not care if you are a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew” starts with “I don’t care if you are a Sunni or a Shia.”
Such a great, ambitious goal cannot be achieved without a global consensus. The world powers have to agree on refraining from using the Muslim conflict as part of their global struggle for power. This is vital and crucial to all of us, and there is no reason for the Western powers to take sole responsibility.
To achieve reconciliation, there is no alternative but to challenge the ones leading this holy war: Iran and Saudi Arabia. There is no question that we need to curb the Iranians’ plans for Middle Eastern hegemony and their persistence in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Iran is fueling fears and feelings of uncertainty not just in Israel, but also in the whole Sunni world. Tehran is fueling and managing conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Iran is leading the whole Shiite world into a holy war with everyone. This will not stop simply through any futile unilateral American effort. If Iran does acquire nuclear weapons, we are almost guaranteed to see much more than the Pakistani-Indian nuclear standoff.
As a born-and-raised Sunni Muslim, I can confidently tell you that if you are looking for one to blame in the Muslim civil war, it is definitely the Sunnis, and above all, Saudi Arabia.
The history of Shia Islam is a long epic of breaking free from Sunni oppression. With the rise of the Shiite Iranian regional superpower, this struggle took a sharp turn. The Saudis are responsible for the incitement and funding of Sunni insurgent groups in Iraq, including the Islamic State, to fight the Shiite groups, triggering a whole new level of Muslim civil war. One should not forget that the first insurgencies and terrorist attacks in Iraq were on Shia mosques and shrines. The same Sunnis are determined to take down the Iranian-backed Bashar Assad in Syria, to the extent of pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into anyone fighting him, creating what we now know as ISIS. Last year, Vice President Joe Biden clearly stated that “our biggest problems are our allies” and explained how Sunnis are directly responsible for creating a world of Sunni terror in order to take down Iran. This should make clear to us that the Sunni-Shia civil war is much more dangerous than we think.
Saudi scholars declare Shia Muslims to be worse than all infidels, even the Jews. We all know that Saudi Arabia is the No. 1 exporter of radical Islam ideology, and it is time to confront it. The House of Saud is responsible for the religious factors spreading hate and seventh-century desert cults. Saudi Arabia is not better than Iran. It’s a country synonymous with human rights violations, compulsion of religion, oppression of women, homosexuals and anyone who dares to question Islam. Saudis are funding terrorism and radical education not just in the Middle East but also in Europe and the U.S. Focusing on Iran while giving the Saudis a pass will not convince anyone we are sincere in our intentions. Mutual pressure on both countries has more chance of success than does siding with one of them.
We can’t induce an alien reform to Islam, but we can create a global atmosphere where Islamic reform is inevitable. Ending the internal civil war within our “religion of peace” will contribute to toning down the sectarian militant speech coming from major Sunni theologians in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Iran and Iraq. By both affirming our values and contributing to the end of Muslim-on-Muslim slaughter, we will be giving Muslims a chance to lay down their AK-47s and reconstruct their own world.
There will be no peace in our world unless we start confronting bad ideas right now. Our morals and values are there to protect our civilization, but civilization itself is under attack from hate speech and despicable ideas. I know that what I’m asking from you and from the world is hard. I know it’s extremely painful. However, hard problems require hard solutions. The amount of effort should be as big as, if not in excess of, the size of the challenge. Any solution to Islamic fundamentalism will be costly and exhausting and must be long term. But we can start the discussion now or wait until our problems get to us. We could be working in our office in New York, taking a subway in London, riding a bus in Jerusalem, grabbing a sandwich in Paris, running a marathon in Boston, having coffee in Copenhagen or ordering hot chocolate in Sydney — this problem already has proven its ability to reach us wherever we are.
Both my points are aiming at calming our world. Creating a new generation of Western-tolerant Muslims is as necessary as making Muslims live in peace with each other, something Saudi-funded schools and mosques won’t help us achieve. We also have to work toward creating coexistent Shias and Sunnis in the Middle East. This does not mean that once we achieve any of this, radical Islam will be eliminated completely. But achieving these goals will offer us new generations of Muslims who are willing to reform their own religion. A new generation of Western Muslims sharing the same education with their infidel peers, parallel to a new generation of Middle Eastern Sunnis and Shias sharing life together, will jointly lead the way to a violence-free Islam. All our efforts should be accompanied by a great investment in education here and abroad. I’ll say it again. Any solution will have to be a long-term, generational one. We all should make the commitment to invest the efforts, education and resources necessary. Only then can we rest knowing the world may not end in a religious nuclear war.
Hussein Aboubakr Mansour was born in 1989 to an Arab Muslim family in Cairo, Egypt, and studied Jewish and Middle Eastern history and Hebrew literature at the Faculty of Arts and Oriental Studies Department at Cairo University. Persecuted by state police for his research at the Israeli Academic Center of Cairo, Mansour participated in the Egyptian revolution until he was forced to depart Egypt as a political refugee. He now lives in the United States.
