Nomad (31 page)

In this poem the Jews are a scapegoat for evil and Islam is a unifying force against evil. Muslims are called upon to ignore their local problems of war, poverty, and tyranny and to unite against Israel, the Zionists, the Jews. This is the anti-Semitism of the twenty-first century. A Muslim who questions the existence of this enemy or his motives is either a fool or a traitor and a heretic.

Europe’s long tradition of Christian and pseudo-scientific anti-Semitism was taken to its logical conclusion by Hitler and the Nazis, with the willing help of many other Europeans who participated in his program of Jewish annihilation. The evil of this “Final Solution” was exposed after the defeat of the Third Reich and combatted thereafter by the reeducation of ordinary Germans, the memorialization of the Holocaust, and the stigmatization or prohibition of neo-Nazi groups. As a result, by the end of the twentieth century most civilized people in the West believed that European anti-Semitism was a thing of the past.

But it is not. It has mutated into something new: Arab Islamic anti-Semitism has replaced European anti-Semitism. The new anti-Semites
have borrowed a few tricks from the Nazis. They employ propaganda tools, such as the counterfeit
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
, that were developed by the Nazis. However, they also have something that the Nazis did not have: a world religion that is growing faster than any other religion, a warrior faith that is espoused by over one and a half billion people. Hitler had
Mein Kampf
and the might of the German Wehrmacht; today’s anti-Semites, like the Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Osama bin Laden, have a holy book, a far greater demographic power, and a good chance of getting their hands on a nuclear weapon.

Despite outer appearances, the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East is no longer about territory. It may seem to be so to Jews and Americans, but from the Arab Islamic perspective it is a holy war in the name of Allah, and victory will come only if the Jews are destroyed or enslaved, if all the infidels are killed, converted, or “dhimmified” into the status of submissive, second-class citizens.

Wars are never fought only on battlefields with military means. Israel, America, and Europe may have stronger armies, but Islam has the numbers. The targets of Muslim propaganda—women, gay people, infidels, Christians, atheists, and Jews—are divided among themselves. The more these groups in the West are divided, the better for Islam. Shia and Sunni Muslims may hate one another; Arab Muslims may degrade African Muslims as slaves; Turks and Persians may look down on Arabs. But at the end of the day, when an imam calls for
Tawhid
, unity in the oneness of Allah, and performs the
takbir, “Allahu Akbar,”
nearly all Muslims unite.

For Muslims to stay united, however, Islam needs an enemy, conspiracy theories, and a rival creed. Jews are the best of scapegoats, for the conspiracy theory that claims they control the world is believed by many. I have heard a Muslim theologian in Holland preach that all evil has been brought to humanity by the Jews. According to him these evils are communism, capitalism, and individualism. He pointed out that Karl Marx was a Jew, Milton Friedman was a Jew, and Sigmund Freud was a Jew. Marxism is an atheist creed and therefore an enemy of Islam. Free enterprise is a distraction from prayer; it involves the ungodly pursuit of earthly wealth and a system of lending
and borrowing with interest (usury), which is forbidden by Islam. So capitalism too is an enemy of Islam. Acknowledging individual urges, dreams, consciousness, and layers of subconsciousness replaces a focus on the hereafter; virtues and vices are not seen as tensions between following the straight path of Allah and that of Satan but as the result of natural and psychological causes. Thus Freud and his followers are also enemies of Islam.

Islam is not just a belief; it is a way of life, a violent way of life. Islam is imbued with violence, and it encourages violence.

Muslim children all over the world are taught the way I was: taught with violence, taught to perpetrate violence, taught to wish for violence against the infidel, the Jew, the American Satan.

I belong to a small group of lucky people who have escaped the permanent closure of my mind through education. I have learned to drop the prejudices that were ingrained in me. In school and in university it was hard sometimes when I learned things that were contrary to the teachings of Islam. I was always aware of a nagging sense of guilt and sin. Reading political theory in Leiden, I felt as if I had been transported to Sodom and Gomorrah. Everything seemed to contradict the political theory of Muhammad. But slowly I learned the new rules of a free society, new ideas that have replaced the old set of values that my parents gave me. The crucial question is whether or not there is a way to help many more young people achieve this opening of the Muslim mind.

Time and again in the past few years I have been asked by Americans who have heard my warnings about the increasingly dangerous impacts of Islam on Western societies: What can be done? Is there anything can we do? It is now time to address the all-important question of
remedies
.

The Muslim mind needs to be opened. Above all, the uncritical Muslim attitude toward the Quran urgently needs to change, for it is a direct threat to world peace. Today 1.57 billion people identify themselves as Muslims. Although they certainly have 1.57 billion different minds, they share a dominant cultural trend: the Muslim mind today seems to be in the grip of jihad. A nebula of movements with al Qaeda-like approaches to Islamic precepts has enmeshed itself in small and large ways into many parts of Muslim community life, including in the West. They spread a creed of violence, mobilizing people on the basis that their identity, which rests in Islam, is under attack.

A person with a mind that has been closed unquestioningly listens to and absorbs the teachings of the fanatics who claim that it is God’s law that Muslims should join the struggle. A person with an open mind—one that is empowered, that has shaken off the fear of hell—can tell the agents of al Qaeda
Yes, it is true that what you say is in the Quran, but I disagree with it. Yes, you ask me to follow the example of the Prophet, but I believe that parts of his example are no longer valid
. A person with an open mind is not immune, but he is armed.

I believe that it is possible for the Muslim mind to be opened and that it is crucial that the closing of so many young minds in the name of Islam should be prevented. But I think there is a much easier and more direct way of opening the Muslim mind than by reinterpreting the Quran so as to tone it down, and that is by a campaign of
enlightenment
.

The intellectual tradition of the European Enlightenment, which began in the seventeenth century and produced its greatest works in the eighteenth, is based on critical reasoning. It employs facts instead of faith, evidence instead of tradition. Morality in this worldview is determined by human beings, not by an outside force. It is a worldview that came into being mainly in reaction to a particular religion, Christianity, and a particular institution of Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church. The process of reaction was very arduous, and actually began centuries before the Enlightenment, when the Catholic Church did not just excommunicate people who disagreed with its worldview but persecuted them, banished them from their homes and communities, threatened them with death, and sometimes killed them.

The Muslim mind is not a monolith, but Muslims share common ideas and reactions that, in the age of jihad, are indispensible to know. For instance, I’m intrigued by the fact that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Muslims felt compelled to protest against a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. Regardless of where they are born, what language they speak, whether they are male or female, rich or poor, Muslims very often refer back to the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. The reason most often given by the agents of radical Islam to mobilize the Muslim masses is
It is in the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad said it
.

There is an enormously important scholarly movement under way to explore the nature of the historical Quran. How did the Quran come to us? When was it written, and who wrote it? What is the origin of the stories, the legends, the principles in the Quran? How do we determine its authenticity? This movement, which is largely an enterprise by secular, non-Muslim academics, seeks factual answers. Their project is not to discredit or attack Islam, or even to enlighten Muslims. These scholars have no political or religious agenda, only a classical academic approach, just like the one that has long applied historical analysis to the Old and New Testaments. Some of them fear for their lives, however, and have to write under pseudonyms. Their work is vital because, if the Muslim mind can be opened to the idea that the Quran was written by a committee of men over the two hundred years that followed Muhammad’s death, the read-only lock on the Holy Book can be opened. If Muslims can allow themselves
to perceive the possibility that a holy book was needed to justify the Arabs’ conquests, every kind of inquiry and cultural shift is possible.

If the Muslim mind is opened, will there still be religious practice—prayer, pilgrimage, dietary laws, a fasting month? Quite possibly. There might even be anti-Semitism, veils, and domestic abuse. Tradition and habit are powerful forces. But behind the veils and beards would be minds asking questions. The possibility of legitimate, individual, critical review of Islamic dogma would at long last exist.

This can be an uncomfortable and painful possibility. Personally, I felt a sense of intense relief when I accepted the possibility that there is no life after death, no hell, no punishment, no burning, no sin. But for others, this insight can lead to misery and emptiness. My sister Haweya and my friend Tahera, whom I knew in the Netherlands, lost their fear of guilt and sin and the terror of everlasting punishment. But their sense of doom in the afterlife seemed to transfer itself into their own lives right here on Earth. I too still sometimes feel this pain of separation from my family and from the simplicity of Islam. It is like the pain of growing from childhood to adolescence or the pain of letting go of parents when they age and die. It is the pain of standing on your own two feet. It is not easy to adapt, or to make good choices; it can be a harsh, harrowing business. Enlightenment thinking will not necessarily bring happiness and ecstasy to the Muslim mind. But it will put the individual firmly in control of his or her own life. Each of us will be free to navigate our way through life, make our own wrong choices, recalculate, and choose again. We will make mistakes, but we will have a chance of overcoming them rather than just fatalistically succumbing to them as Allah’s inscrutable will. Muslims will become true individuals: free, and responsible for their own beliefs and acts.

Let us imagine two teenage friends, Amina and Jane. We meet them just after the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, when Pakistani fundamentalists killed almost two hundred people.

J
ANE:
You are a Muslim. What do you think of the men who killed people in the Taj Hotel in Mumbai? It was a hotel, people were having dinner, they were happy and innocent of wrongdoing.

A
MINA:
Why are you asking me this question?

J
ANE:
The killers were Muslim and they called out “Allah is great!” when they attacked. They obviously thought they were doing this for Islam. You’re a Muslim too.

A
MINA:
What has that got to do with anything?

J
ANE:
It is your God.

A
MINA:
People kill in the name of your God too.

J
ANE:
Yeah, hundreds of years ago.

A
MINA:
No, now, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq and in Chechnya.

J
ANE:
That’s not being done in the name of Christianity. Maybe Christians support those wars and maybe they don’t, but they’re not being fought in the name of the Bible.

A
MINA:
Yes they are. George Bush is a Christian. It says on the dollar “In God We Trust.” The American military prays before they go on a mission. All of this is done in the name of Christ, it is a Christian war against Islam.

J
ANE:
But these Muslim men who killed in the name of Islam in India, they did not distinguish between military and civilians. Their victims were just tourists, they were having dinner.

A
MINA:
Indians are killing Muslims in the name of their Hindu religion.

J
ANE:
Would you kill for your God? Would you kill me, your friend?

A
MINA:
What a weird question. Why do you ask?

J
ANE:
Because you say Christianity makes people do this, Hinduism makes people do that, Muslims defend themselves in the name of Islam, whatever. Would you kill me? If a Muslim wanted to kill members of my family, would you stop him?