Smash hit

Even though the Home Secretary argued that the Bill wasn’t about stopping people from making jokes about religion — which would be a tragedy in the land that gave birth to Monty Python — or stopping people from having robust debates about religion, it is unclear why this Bill was necessary. Inciting religious hatred is already against the law. And as the head of a civil rights group in Britain said: “In a democracy there is no right not to be offended.” He added that religion is related to a body of ideas and people have the right to debate and criticise other people’s ideas. Another activist fighting the Bill averred: “The freedom to criticise ideas, any ideas — even if they are sincerely held beliefs — is one of the fundamental freedoms of society.”

Muslims in Europe and across the world may be seen as roughly dividing into three groups. Most visible are the terrorists, who resort to violence (and their allies, the fundamentalists, who do not kill or maim, but provide the terrorists with material and non-material or psychological assistance). Second, their polar opposite is a group of people (and although tiny, it is growing) which may be characterised by its questioning of the relevance and moral soundness of Muhammad’s example.

They may one day provide an intellectual counterweight to the terrorists and their supporters. I, who was born and bred a Muslim, count myself among them. We in this group have embraced the open society as a true alternative to a society based on the laws of Muhammad — a better way to build a framework for human life. We could call this group the reformers.

The terrorists have far more power and resources than the reformers, but both groups vie to influence the thinking of the vast majority of Muslims. The reformers use only nonviolent means, like writing, to draw attention to debates over core values. The terrorists and fundamentalists, however, use force, the threat of force, appeals to pity (“look at what the West is doing to Islam and Muslims”), and ad hominem smears to evoke a knee-jerk community to withdraw into self-defence.

In the West, these tactics give rise to moral relativists who defend so-called victims of Islamophobia; meanwhile, the reformists are shunned by their families and communities and live under the constant fear of assassination. In short, the core of the debate is made taboo, and the fundamentalists attain a near monopoly on the hearts and minds of the third and largest group of Muslims, the undecided.

Who are these “undecided” Muslims? They are the group to which Tony Blair refers when he says: “The vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims here and abroad are decent and law-abiding people.” They live in Edgware Road and Bradford, and in Amsterdam and St Denis; they are not fervent observers of every ritual of Islam, but they count themselves as believers. They are immigrants and second-generation youths who have come to the West to enjoy the benefits of the open society, in which they have a vested interest. But they do not question the infallibility of Muhammad and the soundness of his moral example. They know that Muhammad calls for slaughter of infidels; they know that the open society rightly condemns the slaughter of innocents. They are caught in a mental cramp of cognitive dissonance, and it is up to the West to support the reformists in trying to ease them out of that painful contradiction. The established Muslim organisations, which operate on government subsidy, offer no more than a cosmetic approach to eradicating terrorism inspired by the Prophet Muhammad — “peace be upon Him”, naturally.

The first victims of Muhammad are the minds of Muslims themselves. They are imprisoned in the fear of Hell and so also fear the very natural pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. There is as yet no consensus in the West on whether to support the side of the radical reformers. The present-day attitude of Western cultural relativists, who flinch from criticising Muhammad for fear of offending Muslims, allows Western Muslims to hide from reviewing their own moral values. This attitude also betrays the tiny majority of Muslim reformers who desperately require the support — and even the physical protection — of their natural allies in the West.

Muslims must review and reform their approach to Muhammad’s teachings if those who love freedom and the open society are to co-exist peacefully with them. The terrorists and their allies the fundamentalists should not dictate to us Westerners the rules of the game. We must maintain and proclaim our core values of free and open debate, of rational thinking, and the rule of law not religion. In this, the resolve of the British people to preserve civil rights is brave, and should be an example to all of us. The use of torture and the denial of legal rights to suspects of terrorism will serve only to corrupt Western systems and views of the West as a model of openness. Such actions also provide the terrorists with facts that serve as ammunition to prove their specious argument that the West is hypocritical and morally confused.

© Ayaan Hirsi Ali 2006

Awakening

In the preface to The Caged Virgin Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes how she came to question her upbringing

My parents in Somalia brought me up to be a Muslim — a good Muslim. Muslims, as we were taught the meaning of the name, are people who submit themselves to Allah’s will, which is found in the Koran and the Hadith, a collection of sayings ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad. I was taught that Islam sets us apart from the rest of the world, the world of non-Muslims. We Muslims are chosen by God. They, the others, the Kaffirs, the unbelievers, are antisocial, impure, barbaric, not circumcised, immoral, unscrupulous, and above all, obscene; they have no respect for women; their girls and women are whores; many of the men are homosexual; men and women have sex without being married. The unfaithful are cursed, and God will punish them most atrociously in the hereafter.

But, through my personal experiences, through reading a great deal and speaking to others, I have come to realise that the existence of Allah, of angels, demons, and a life after death, is at the very least disputable. If Allah exists at all, we must not regard His word as absolute, but challenge it.

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