Given advances in transportation and communication in the
modern age, the cultures of the globe have come into closer contact than ever
before. Peoples who belong to cultures
separated by tens of thousands of miles apart can interact in seconds, and
peoples belonging to a myriad of cultures mix in the world’s great
metropolises, able to easily travel across oceans in a matter of hours. People in the far corners of the globe are no
longer sheltered by distance, forced to interact on a daily basis with many who
come from different backgrounds and experiences than their own. Here in the United States, we have not lived
up to the principles o of tolerance upon which this nation was founded.
In the last
year, we have dealt with great strife between different groups within
traditional Western Judeo-Christian culture.
However, for the last fourteen years, we have dealt with another
problem, one which has been largely ignored by the mainstream media and
American society. President Obama’s
recent comments affirming that America is not at war with Islam should be a
wake-up call to Americans. As a nation
which has been built through the immigration of peoples from all parts of the
world, Americans should not need their President to reiterate that we are not
at war with an entire religion.
Unfortunately,
most Americans are both ignorant of Islam and have misinterpreted what little
they know to mean that, at best, Judeo-Christian Americans and Muslims, both
American and foreign, cannot coexist. At
worst, they are hostile towards Muslims both at home and abroad. Clearly, this is partly the result of
political fear mongering, as politicians use the spectre of militant Islam to
remind their constituents that they are the stronger candidate when it comes to
foreign policy or defense. More
generally, it is the result of a woeful misunderstanding of Islam and Muslims
on the part of Americans.
John
Esposito’s Islam: The Straight Path
is an important introduction for Americans who would like to bridge that
dangerous gap in understanding. Esposito
takes readers from the Muhammad and the establishment of Islam in the 7th
Century Arabian Peninsula to the state of global Islam today. Rather than using a traditional chronological
structure, Esposito has built the book around a collection of the important
themes in the history of Islam. Esposito
begins by explaining the beginnings of Islam with Muhammad, providing the
context and the story of the establishment of the religion.
Esposito
does not shy away from pointing out the major differences between the story of
the establishment of Islam and those of the two major American religions,
particularly the political and military nature of early Islam, two components
that were not as pronounced in early Christianity or Judaism, he uses the text
of the Quran itself to stress that in many ways, Islam’s Allah is more
forgiving than God in the Bible.
Esposito explains that in the Quran, after Adam ate of the apple in the
Garden of Eden in the Quran, “God extends to Adam His mercy and guidance: ‘But
his Lord chose him. He turned to him and
gave him guidance’” (Esposito, 30).
Throughout his text, Esposito stresses the forgiving nature of Islam,
and the misinterpretations that underlie the militant extremism today.
Most
importantly, Esposito provides an overview of Islam in the world today, the
state of the Islamic world, and the origins of militant Islam. The first step to understanding how to
counter militant Islam is understanding its origins. In ‘The Struggle for Islam in the Twenty-First
Century,’ Esposito lays out the current climate of Islam. He focuses not only on terrorism as a key
point of contention in Islam, but also on Sharia reform and the necessity for
Islamic law to modernize to match the circumstances of the modern world, on the
role of democracy in Islam, on the rights of Muslim women and the push for the
reclamation of those rights, and on the treatment of non-Muslim minorities in
the Muslim world.
The focus
on non-Muslim minorities is particularly poignant as Coptic Christians and
Azeris have become targets of Muslim extremists in Libya and of Islamic State
in Iraq. This follows hand-in-hand with
the rise of terrorism. As terrorists
ignore the true nature of Islam to mold it to their own violent aims, so they
ignore the tolerant and conciliatory tone of the Quran to lead in the
persecution of non-Muslim minorities, much the same as when they target all
those who do not follow or bow to their skewed perception of Islam.
Esposito
uses the radicalization of Bin Laden to highlight the origins of global
Jihad. Many Americans do not consider
how our actions will be perceived in the world, and Bin Laden’s anti-Western
radicalization is an important example.
Esposito writes,
“Bin Laden became alienated from the
House of Saud and radicalized by the prospect that an American-led coalition
coming to oust Saddam Hussein from his occupation of Kuwait in the Gulf War of
1991 would lead to the increased presence and influence of America in Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf. Bin Laden and
others like him are driven by political and economic grievances but draw on a
tradition of religious extremism, past and present, to religiously justify and
legitimate their path of violence and warfare” (Esposito, 240).
He also explains that many Muslims initially turned to
extremist Islam after they felt abandoned by political leaders, many (but not
all) of whom are autocratic, corrupt, unwilling or unable to provide
opportunities for the advancement of their people, and propped up by the West. While most Americans, as well as many
Muslims, saw the U.S. and its coalition partners as doing a great service to
the peoples of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait by driving the Iraqi army off the Saudi
border and out of Kuwait, they did not consider how American troops in the land
of Islam’s most holy cities would be perceived by more extreme elements in the
Muslim world. Similarly, Americans must
consider the perception of our actions among peoples who do not share our
worldview as we navigate the challenging environment in the Middle East today.
While
Esposito’s account of Islam is a useful introduction for many who are largely
unfamiliar with one of the world’s largest global religions, he does pay only
cursory attention to one of the more important episode of Christian-Muslim
interaction in history. Esposito spends
only a few pages discussing the Crusades, when Christian armies invaded the
Holy Land and massacred thousands of its Muslim, Jewish, and Christian
inhabitants. Esposito writes,
“The contrast between the behavior of
the Christian and Muslim armies in the First Crusade has been etched deeply in
the collective memory of Muslims. In
1099, the Crusaders stormed Jerusalem and established Christian sovereignty
over the Holy Land. They left no Muslim
survivors; women and children were massacred.
The Noble Sanctuary, the Haram al-Sharif, was desecrated as the Dome of
the Rock was converted into a church and the al-Aqsa mosque, renamed the Temple
of Solomon, became a residence for the king...In 1187, Salah al-Din
(Saladin)...led his army in a fierce battle and recaptured
Jerusalem...Civilians were spared; churches and shrines were generally left
untouched. The striking differences in
military conduct were epitomized by the two dominant figures of the Crusades:
Saladin and Richard the Lion-Hearted.
The chivalrous Saladin was faithful to his word and compassionate toward
noncombatants. Richard accepted the
surrender of Acre and then proceeded to massacre all its inhabitants, including
women and children, despite promises to the contrary” (Esposito, 64-65).
Those in the United States who claim that terrorism shows
Islam to be an inherently brutal religion, and that Christianity and Judaism
could never inspire the violence and injustice exhibited by modern Muslim
terrorism, would do well to remember Christians’ actions throughout the
Crusades. Esposito does briefly touch on
this period, but makes an error in not spending more time exploring the
importance of this period, its impact on Christian-Muslim relations, and
implications for Western policy in the Middle East today (the Crusades often
play a role in extremist Muslim rhetoric).
Islam: the Straight Path, is a useful
introduction to Islam. It is written
from the perspective of a Western academic, one which Americans can understand
and with which we can relate, but it includes the insights of one who is deeply
familiar with the Quran and the cultures, histories, and peoples of the Muslim
world. Hopefully, more Americans will
read this book and others like it in order to begin to bridge the gap of
ignorance between us and our Muslim neighbors, both here in the United States
and across the globe.
--Benjamin Spacapan
