On Faith: Muslims Speak Out Blog

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl

Not too long ago, the Guardian newspaper in the U.K. reported that Saudi Arabia had bribed the British government with a $70 million arms deal to cease a criminal investigation against members of the Saudi royal family, and stop affording asylum to two prominent Saudi dissidents, Sa’d al-Din al-Faqih and Muhammad al-Mis’iri. These two men called attention to Saudi Arabia human rights abuses, and were strong advocates for democratic reform in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world. Per the terms of the arms deal, they were turned over to Saudi Arabia where they would certainly be tortured and killed.

For three days, neither government confirmed nor denied the Yamama deal, as it came to be known. At the same time, the British government ordered the Guardian to stop reporting on this matter of national security. Shockingly, al-Faqih and al-Mis’iri, both British citizens, were arrested, denaturalized and deported. Relying solely on Saudi evidence, both men were charged with supporting terrorism. This is only one example in an extremely alarming trend of human rights abuses committed by Western democracies in the name of fighting terrorism. Add to this the recent revelations about secret U.S. detention centers, the horrifying use of torture by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and the abhorrent practice of “rendition” or “proxy” torture, where other governments do the dirty work at the behest of the U.S

These are all serious moral failures that have disastrous consequences for humanity at large, not to mention the effective “front line” for the world in fighting extremist Islam—moderate Muslims like al-Faqih and al-Mis’iri, who typically espouse the ideals of democracy, pluralism, and human rights. It would be a grave mistake to think of these practices as the unfortunate but necessary compromises in the fight against terrorism—they only perpetuate the very same problem that they are purportedly intended to solve.

These types of abuses are built on a logic of pragmatic opportunism, the exact logic upon which Osama Bin Laden and many extremist movements justify their acts of terror. Modern Islam is currently under siege by a virulently extremist movement rooted in the Saudi brand of Islam known as “Wahhabism”. Unfortunately, as in the Yamama deal, Saudi Arabia has been wildly successful in using its financial means to control the voice of Islam around the world, neutralize or terminate alternative voices, and force Muslims and non-Muslims into accepting Wahhabi Islam as the only valid form of Islam. In reality, Wahhabism was an outlier and marginal movement in Islamic history, and its theology was largely alien to Islam until Saudi money forced Wahhabism upon the Muslim mainstream. Although Wahhabism boasts a literalist approach to Islamic texts, it is starkly functionalist and pragmatic. Wahhabi extremists very often rely upon the logic of social and political necessity to overcome ethical and moral inhibitions, and to justify a wide range of abuses from terrorism to torture and the oppression of women.

But here at home, in the so called war against terrorism, we find that the same logic prevails. Western democracies have their own pietistic rhetoric about democracy and human rights, but in the name of national interest we often act in an unprincipled opportunistic fashion. As in the case of the Yamama deal, Western democracies can commit or condone grave human rights violations in the name of national security. And, several Western democracies, including the United States, continue to overlook the many human rights abuses committed by the Saudi government while unabashedly declaring this government to be a close ally and friend. Also in the name of pragmatism, we have become marred in the quagmire of detentions without due process, extrajudicial killings, the killing of civilians, and torture or proxy torture.

The most recent example of this logic is the insistence of the executive branch of our government on having the unfettered power to conduct surveillance against its own citizens without any judicial involvement. Other than degrading our country’s civil liberties, this position materially alters the balance of powers between the three branches of government at the expense of the judiciary, and distorts the very nature of American democracy.

This reminds me of two statements made by Bin Laden, in which he mocked the ideas of democracy and human rights as Western hypocrisy. Bin Laden predicted that his war with the West would push the West to abandon its avowed moral principles of upholding human rights and democracy, and show its true inhumane face. Second, he predicted the defeat of those Muslims, our “front line”, who embrace the West’s ideals and oppose Wahhabism.

Unfortunately, it appears his first prediction is becoming all too true. In this war on terror, every human or civil rights failure is a victory for terrorism. Terrorists do not assess their victories by counting the number of people killed; they assess the extent to which they have broken the spirit of their opponent, and the degree to which their opponent, while plagued by fear, abandons its own ideals, ultimately to its own demise.

The outcome of his second prediction has yet to be seen, although indications are not encouraging. It is common knowledge that moderate Muslims and Wahhabi inspired extremists are battling for the very soul of Islam. The West can make the vital difference for the moderate cause, now humanity’s cause. If Wahhabism is defeated as an active and viable theology in the Muslim world, then the very ideological foundations of the Bin Laden’s of the world will be thoroughly undermined.

On Faith: Muslims Speak Out Blog