Struggle For The Soul Of Islam

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There is no pat explanation for what draws people to Islam in its most toxic, intolerant form. According to studies for a government project to counter the spread of Muslim extremism in Britain, recruitment for radical groups is just as likely to take place on college campuses, among educated middle-class Muslims, as it is in poor neighborhoods. Historians like Princeton's Bernard Lewis argue that such factors as the repressive nature of many Arab governments and the sense of aggrievement that has plagued Muslim societies since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire also play a part in fueling virulent Islam. And so does the fact that radical Islam holds, for some, the attractions of any other faith: a world view, a strict discipline and order to life, a reason to live and an alluring vision of an afterlife.

In the past three years, the spiritual appeal of fundamentalism has been buttressed by a political imperative: defending Islam against the U.S. The American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has provided militant clerics like Pakistan's Maulana Abdul Aziz with a potent recruiting tool. Every Friday at the so-called Red Mosque, which sits a mile from the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, Aziz incites his followers to take up arms against the U.S. The government of President Pervez Musharraf has told Aziz to tone down his rhetoric, but he has refused. "I told them that my God is Allah, not Bush or Musharraf," he says. "I openly tell my students to go for jihad, to fight for Muslims and punish those who have occupied Muslim lands."

Defenders of the war in Iraq point out that for all of the occupation's turmoil, the horrors of Saddam's rule were far worse. But the images of ongoing violence and devastation in Iraq, beamed all over the Islamic world by satellite channels like al-Jazeera, have inarguably emboldened radical Islamists, who equate the U.S. occupation in Iraq with Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. Moderate Muslims say negative reports from Iraq have rendered futile their attempts to counter the rhetoric of the radicals. "You get in debates about Islam with other Muslims, about the need to modernize, to be more tolerant, less anti-Semitic, and people say to me, 'Yes, but look at what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians,'" says Canadian journalist Irshad Manji, author of the provocative book The Trouble with Islam. "'Or look at what the U.S. is doing in Iraq.' It's hard these days to get beyond that." Egyptian cleric el-Guindi, who has a large following among affluent Muslims in Cairo, says he can no longer preach in public because of pressure from conservative clerics who object to his brand of liberal Islam. "These days," he says, "it is extremely depressing to be a Muslim preacher with a moderate message. The surrounding circumstances form a huge stumbling block."