The two Islams

In the third of four edited excerpts from his new book, Chasing a Mirage, Tarek Fatah discusses the two streams of Islam Muslims have brought to the world -- one peaceful and the other militant.

In August, 1990, 45 representatives from Muslim countries, under the auspices of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, signed the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. The result leaves much to be desired. Although successive Islamic declarations on human rights have tried to present themselves as compatible with the principle of universal basic rights, a number of severe contradictions exist between these declarations and Western constitutionalism. The most important is that Islam does not accept separating religion from the state and societal affairs. According to Articles 23 and 24 of the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, all rights and freedoms are subject to Islamic sharia. In this framework, human rights lose their unconditional character and their focus on the protection of the individual vis-a-vis any kind of power.

Hence, within Islamic states there is an unavoidable blurring of religious and political authority, which has an important impact on the implementation and interpretation of human rights. Consider Morocco, for example. It is a relatively secular state, yet Morocco's King Hassan presents himself as a direct descendent of the Prophet. In Iran the role of Islam in defining the state is made clear in its constitution. Article 2 stipulates that "The Islamic Republic is a system based on belief in: The One God, His exclusive sovereignty and right to legislate, and the necessity of submission to His commands..."

In the same spirit, the majority of the Arab constitutions declare sharia as the basis of legislation, or at least consider it as a main source of legislation. This legitimizes the notion of racial and religious superiority, and allows for multiple levels of citizenship and widespread and systemic discrimination against racial and religious minorities living within a state's borders. Invariably, the human rights of the weak and dispossessed, the minorities and women, the disabled and the heretics, are trampled upon without the slightest sense of guilt or wrongdoing. Men and women are imprisoned, routinely tortured and often killed, while numbed citizens, fearful of offending Islam, unsure about their own rights, insecure about their own identities, allow these violations to continue.

By looking the other way, the intelligentsia and middle classes have become complicit in these crimes. They justify their inaction as patriotism, where they stand in solidarity with the Islamic State, with the misguided idea that those who fight for universal human rights are somehow working for Western imperialism or represent the interests of Judeo-Christian civilization.

One could say there are two Islams that Muslims have introduced to the world. One, peaceful, spiritual and deeply respectful of the "other," an Islam that relied on the Quranic expression, "To you your religion, to me mine." It is this Islam that today makes Indonesia the world's largest Muslim nation with 250 million people.