Ryan Hadeed

When­ev­er I trav­el to the States, I spend a fair amount of the time pray­ing the Rosary. While it's al­ways been a very calm­ing prac­tice, I nev­er once thought that my pos­ses­sion of such a re­li­gious ar­ti­cle would end up be­ing a cause of con­fu­sion. In the eigh­teen months fol­low­ing the events of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, every time I en­tered the US, I was pulled aside by im­mi­gra­tion for a sec­ondary in­spec­tion. Dur­ing one of those back­room in­ter­views, I was asked to emp­ty the con­tents of my pock­ets, out of which I pro­duced the col­lec­tion of beads and its at­tached cru­ci­fix. The of­fi­cer picked them up for a clos­er ex­am­i­na­tion; I still re­mem­ber the per­plexed look on his face. Af­ter a mo­ment, he looked up at me and, in a sheep­ish tone, de­clared, "My God, you're Catholic." I imag­ine that he was un­able to fath­om how a per­son with an Arab sur­name wasn't a Mus­lim.

As the world's pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ues to grow, its size, in con­trast, has be­gun to metaphor­i­cal­ly shrink. Im­mi­grants and their chil­dren are al­ter­ing the racial, cul­tur­al, and re­li­gious make-up of coun­tries and their lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties. But not every­one is hap­py with liv­ing in this new 'glob­al vil­lage', es­pe­cial­ly if your neigh­bour is brown, beard­ed, and refers to God as Al­lah. Is­lam­o­pho­bia has been on the rise since that trag­ic morn­ing in Sep­tem­ber, 15 years ago. And the fre­quen­cy of ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties com­mit­ted by Mus­lims means that the neg­a­tive sen­ti­ment is on­ly go­ing to get worse.

Non-Mus­lims should al­ways be en­cour­aged to ex­er­cise tol­er­ance and un­der­stand­ing. But the stan­dard de­fence of deny­ing the 'per­pe­tra­tors as true Mus­lims' or stat­ing that 'this is not Is­lam' is no longer con­vinc­ing. This may be part of the rea­son for the ab­sence of world­wide out­pour­ing over the mas­sacres in Is­tan­bul, Bagh­dad and Sau­di Ara­bia as op­posed to the re­sponse that Paris, Brus­sels and Or­lan­do re­ceived. The back­lash has gone be­yond hate crimes and prej­u­dice and is now one of ap­a­thy and in­dif­fer­ence ie, 'If they want to kill each oth­er, let them go right ahead, as long as they leave the rest of us alone.' The un­for­tu­nate truth is that Mus­lims, re­gard­less of how friend­ly or mod­er­ate they may ap­pear, are still looked up­on with sus­pi­cion.

The at­tacks that have tak­en place in the heart of the Is­lam­ic world dur­ing the clos­ing days of Ra­madan have shown that even fel­low Mus­lims will not be spared from the slaugh­ter. Per­haps this is the wa­ter­shed mo­ment that will serve as the im­pe­tus for a frank and open di­a­logue on the na­ture of the re­li­gion, con­fronting the bad as well as the good. The ques­tion most of­ten asked by non-Mus­lims is whether Is­lam is a re­li­gion that pro­motes vi­o­lence. But ad­dress­ing it mustn't be­come a medi­um for as­sign­ing blame, as all the ad­her­ents of the faith shouldn't be held ac­count­able for the ac­tions of a few ex­trem­ists. That be­ing said, there may be a dis­tinc­tion be­tween be­lief and prac­tice, mean­ing that even if the num­bers of the lat­ter are mi­nus­cule, those of the fore might be nu­mer­ous.

In­stead of analysing the in­di­vid­u­als re­spon­si­ble for these acts of mass mur­der, their men­tal state or so­cio-eco­nom­ic back­ground, let's look at the rad­i­cal groups whose ide­ol­o­gy ap­peals to them. Be it ISIL, Al-Qae­da, Boko Haram, or Hamas, they all cite vers­es from the Q'uran and Ha­diths to val­i­date and ra­tio­nalise their ac­tions. Are the vi­o­lent teach­ings they con­tain any dif­fer­ent to those found in the Jew­ish Torah or the Chris­t­ian Bible? No. But even the small parts that are vi­o­lent can over­shad­ow every­thing else. Keep in mind, too, that those be­ing called ter­ror­ists see them­selves as per­form­ing an act of ji­had in Al­lah's name. And that's the lens through which non-Mus­lims view Is­lam.

There's a Mus­lim re­formist named Ir­shad Man­ji, who sug­gests in her book, The Trou­ble With Is­lam To­day, that the prob­lem isn't their re­li­gion, but Mus­lims them­selves–those who fo­cus sole­ly on its vi­o­lent teach­ings and the ma­jor­i­ty who fail to speak up in protest. The si­lence is mis­con­strued by non-Mus­lims as tac­it ap­proval. Ms Man­ji is an in­trigu­ing per­son­al­i­ty not on­ly be­cause of her provoca­tive opin­ion but for what she rep­re­sents�the new voice of Is­lam that's strug­gling to be heard. She's young, west­ern raised and ed­u­cat­ed, pro­gres­sive in her think­ing, and a les­bian; the com­plete an­tithe­sis to the tra­di­tion­al beard­ed old Mufti preach­ing or­tho­doxy. In or­der to counter ex­trem­ism and the re­sult­ing Is­lam­o­pho­bia, she ad­vo­cates that a new gen­er­a­tion of Mus­lims need to be equipped with the self-con­fi­dence to recog­nise that they can think for them­selves in­stead of blind­ly sub­mit­ting. And to not on­ly de­nounce but re­ject the el­e­ments that are out­dat­ed and in­com­pat­i­ble with the mod­ern world. So Mus­lims should nev­er be ex­pect­ed to apol­o­gise or de­fend their faith, but they need to ush­er in their own re­li­gious re­nais­sance�to en­gage in an hon­est con­ver­sa­tion that seeks to iden­ti­fy the 'whys' and of­fer mean­ing­ful so­lu­tions.

When de­cid­ing to write on this top­ic, I have to ad­mit feel­ing a sense of trep­i­da­tion, which is iron­ic con­sid­er­ing that I wouldn't have thought twice about crit­i­cal­ly dis­cussing Catholi­cism. So I am guilty of har­bour­ing the same fear of which I my­self ex­pe­ri­enced first-hand. Some will be an­gered by this per­spec­tive, and that's fine, but I shouldn't be afraid to present it. Af­ter all, the Rosary in my back pock­et isn't a bul­let­proof vest.