In an earlier essay I titled "dealing with Islamicists" I talked about the power of "hadith" and tried to talk about the role of interpretation in dealing with people who are muslims. But this is easier said than done. Islam, like Christianity and Judaism is a "revealed religion." The benefit of the "God-Concept" is that it gives us an absolute authority beyond human control. The drawback of the God concept of the ultimate is that religions tend to try to tell us that their teacher or prophet is beyond question. In the case of Mohammed, Mohammed is portrayed as the "seal of the prophets." To even question his teachings is punishable by death according to their orthodoxy.
This is why Wahabiism and Bin Laden are so tied together. The fundamentalist teachings that were developed first in Cairo and later put to practice in Saudi Arabia during the first stages of it's revolt against the Turks, have associated with them some particularly self-serving notions. We are seeing this in the glorification of violence among the fanatics. Those people are not orthodox. A good exegite among Moslems could refute most of their notions and show that they are violating Islamic restrictions by attacking innocent women and children.
Nevertheless, it is going to be a long and hard road. The Saudi's by teaching Wahabiism, with it's fundamentalism and authoritarianism, have set in motion a movement of people who are monsters. These are people who see human beings as targets and not as human beings at all. They do it for hate. They do it for revenge. And they do it because they confuse revenge with Justice. This is a human failing not a particularly Moslem one. Timothy McVeigh had the same monstrous disregard for consequences and humanity that we saw in the organized attack this weekend outside of Chechnya.
Posted by cholte at September 5, 2004 06:44 PM