Post by peterd on Oct 1, 2007 14:36:28 GMT -8
Special Dispatch-North African Reformist Thinkers Project Part I
October 2, 2007
No. 1729
Tunisian Reformist Lafif Lakhdar: European Muslims Should Adopt Universal Values; There is Only One Civilization; The Koranic Verse on Wife-Beating Should Be Abrogated; When Bourquiba Abolished Polygamy in Tunisia, the Majority of Women Were Opposed; Why Bring the Mosque into French Schools When the Church Has Been Taken Out of Them; To Respect Muslims' Religious Freedom to Beat Their Wives and Circumcise Their Daughters, France Would Have to Violate Human Rights
To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit:
www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD172907.
On September 8, 2007, the liberal Arab e-journal Elaph posted an interview with prominent Arab liberal Lafif Lakhdar by MEMRI Chairman Professor M. Milson. In the interview, Lakhdar outlined his views on Muslims in Europe, Islam and humanism, and Islamism versus secularism, among other topics.
Lafif Lakhdar has been a firsthand witness to many important moments in Middle East history. He was active in the FLN in Paris in the early 1960s, and later became a close advisor to Algeria's first president Ahmed Ben Bella. In 1970, he accompanied the PLO from Jordan to Beirut, and became a prominent figure in Lebanese left-wing circles. Later, disillusioned by the Lebanese civil war, he broke with the left and returned to Paris, where he lives to this day.(1)
The following are excerpts from the interview:(2)
European Muslims Should Adopt Universal Values In Order to Revive and Renew Their Own Tradition
"Menahem Milson: What is the meaning of the ideological struggle we see raging today among Muslims in Europe?
"Lafif Lakhdar: Two basic tendencies are struggling against one another within European Islam. The first is the tendency that holds fast to Muslims' cultural independence with regard to European societies, and retains Islamic traditions in their entirety – among them those that conflict with the major universal humanistic values of European societies, such as equality of the sexes, secularism, and individual liberty.
"The second tendency, and the one to which I subscribe, demands the opposite: the cultural assimilation of European Muslims and of those [Muslims] living in Europe into the European societies, and the adoption of [European] universal civilizational values in order to revive and renew their [own] traditional values, most of which are no longer in conformity with the times.
"This assimilation, which is necessary, does not mean that they have to abandon their spiritual values or the best of their social values or their history. It only means that they abandon those traditions that are in contradiction with the values of the International Declaration of Human Rights and the other U.N. conventions that derive from it, such as the Convention on the Elimination of [All Forms of] Discrimination against Women, and the conventions on children's rights and the protection of minorities.
"What gives cause for hope is that, according to the latest survey, the Muslims with the highest percentage of cultural assimilation in France are the Tunisians. This is due in large part to the quality of Tunisian religious education, which has nothing of the culture of hatred for 'infidels,' but rather a culture of moderation that Tunisians absorb through [both] the religious and the political discourses.(3) Unfortunately, this is rare in the lands of Islam."
I Have Demanded the Abrogation of the Koranic Verse on Wife-Beating
"MM: Could you be specific about what you mean when you speak about traditions that conflict with human rights?
"LL: The Islamic values that conflict with human rights, and which Muslims everywhere, and in particular those in Europe, where women enjoy nearly full rights, accept, are, for example, disdain for women and the beating of women, as Koran 4:34 commands: 'Beat them.' I have demanded the abrogation of this verse, i.e., that it not be put into practice, because it is no longer in conformity with the universal values of the age. This year, the Islamic Tunisian historian Mohammed Talbi also demanded its abrogation.
"Likewise, we Muslims need to stop considering the proliferation of children as a religious obligation. We need to stop depriving non-Muslim women married to Muslim men of their rights to guardianship over their children and of inheriting from their Muslim spouses and children. We need to stop the sexual disfigurement of girls through circumcision. We need to stop insisting on women's inequality to men in civil rights, and on polygamy, which is a catastrophe for Muslims in their countries and in the diaspora.
"In France, there are 30,000 polygamous families... with an average of 14.5 children in each family. The rate of [children] failing in school among them is very high, as are the rates of marginalization and delinquency. [On the other hand,] the average [school] success rate among families with no more than five children is close to the general French average."
"In Truth, There is Only... One World Civilization"
"The Islamists often present the counter-argument 'You want to destroy us from the root!' I am conscious of the people's need to be connected to their historical roots, but I propose to Muslims that they maintain a symbolic tie to their roots – for instance, celebrating their holidays and putting into practice their spiritual values. At the same time, I propose that they develop an organic tie with modern civilization, that is, democratic institutions and modern humanistic values and sciences. There is no future for Muslims if they remain outside of [this framework], and particularly if they are against it.
"In truth, there is only... one world civilization. But there are a number of cultures that cannot be accepted [into it] unless they make their traditions, which are at times barbaric, conform to the values of human rights.
"The first tendency , which is actively promoted by the French Islamists and the traditionalist imams – and they are the overwhelming majority – is the dominant one in European Islam. [In fact,] this tendency rejects the appellation 'European Islam,' preferring the appellation 'Islam in Europe' in order to emphasize its cultural independence from the societies in which it lives..."
The European Media Favor Tareq Ramadan Over Secularist Muslim Intellectuals
"MM: From where does the tendency opposed to assimilation draw its strength?
"LL: The tendency opposed to assimilation draws its strength from four basic factors:
"1) The religious discourse – Friday sermons, preaching, private Islamic schools, and the media – is under the monopoly of the supporters of this tendency. Even the European media – the audio-visual media in particular – which looks to be provocative at any price – presents the supporters of this tendency on any and every occasion. [They present] people like Tareq Ramadan, and it is rare for them to present Fathi Bin Salama, or Malek Chebel, or Taher Ben Jelloun, Ghaleb bin Sheikh, [former] Marseilles mufti Soheib Bin Sheikh, Yousef Siddiq, George Trabishi, Hashem Saleh, Mohammed Arkoun, or myself, and dozens of other secularist Muslim intellectuals.
"The Arab media, like Al-Jazeera, Iqra, and Al-Manar [TV], which have a large audience among European Muslims, act in the same manner. The supporters of the secularist tendency are blocked out of these media. 'The Opposite Direction,' the most popular program on Al-Jazeera, has been boycotting me ever since I refuted, on the last show I was on, the claims of the Holocaust deniers.(4) And [Saudi] Prince Khaled Bin Sultan banned me from writing in [the Saudi-owned international Arab newspaper] Al-Hayat in 2001, after I insisted, during an Al-Jazeera program, on the necessity of intervention by international civil society to stop the stoning of Muslim women in Iran.(5)
"2) The second factor is the petrodollars that flow to the supporters of the tendency opposed to assimilation, so that they can have their own press, translate Al-Qaradhawi's books into European languages, and send preachers to the suburbs and all the French cities to stuff the minds of Europe's Muslims with their anti-assimilation propaganda and their incitement to violate the values of human rights.
"3) The third factor is that the organization of Muslims in Europe, and especially in France, favors the tendency opposed to European Islam's assimilation into European societies over the tendency that demands its assimilation."
The Jurisprudence of Al-Wala W'Al-Bara Divides Humanity Into 'Believers' and 'Infidels,' With the Only Relationship Between Them Being War
"4) The fourth factor is the jurisprudence of al-wala w'al-bara, [which states that] allegiance [must be] limited to believers, and [declares] total renunciation of the infidels (polytheists, Jews, and Christians). This jurisprudence is what played a role in forming the religious culture of Europe's Muslims, especially first-generation ones, since they learned this in their countries, from primary school through higher [education].
"Today, this is the jurisprudence broadcast by audio-visual media such as Al-Jazeera, Iqra, and Al-Manar [TV[, which have a large audience among Europe's Muslims. It is [also] spread through Islamist and jihadist websites. The mujahid Sheikh Ayman Al-Zawahiri wrote in his book Knights under the Banner of the Prophet that the spread of the slogan of al-wala w'al-bara among the masses of the Islamic nation is Al-Qaeda's main goal – and not the liberation of Palestine, 'despite its being dear to us.'
"[Al-Zawahiri writes:] 'Making the masses of the Islamic nation understand al-wala w'al-bara will require a long time, and our enemies will not give us that time. Therefore, we must use jihad in Palestine as a means of making the Islamic nation understand al-wala w'al-bara' – in other words, [making them understand] that the Jews and the Christians are our enemies and that we must treat them as enemies, through jihad against them, until we either make them accept Islam, or finish them off...
"Al-wala w'al-bara divides humanity into 'believers' and 'infidels,' with the only relationship between them being [one of] hatred and jihad – that is, war. It divides the world into 'the abode of Islam' and the 'abode of war.' The abode of war, ever since the Crusader wars, has been Europe, and the abode of Islam's relationship to it has been hatred of it and jihad against it. [Al-wala w'al-bara also requires] the total renunciation of the 'infidel' inhabitants' religions, their customs in clothing and food, and their institutions, sciences, and values. [It] considers Muslims who imitate the infidels to be apostates who must be fought and killed.
"The jurisprudence of al-wala w'al-bara forbids living in the abode of war for more than three days, unless this is necessary for trade, medical treatment, or studies 'in useful branches of science that are found only in the lands of the infidels.' But [even this] permission to live in the infidel lands is contingent upon the Muslim remaining devoted to his religion, taking pride in it, and hating the infidels.
"Saudi students learn: 'If you live in the infidel lands – in order to receive medical treatment, for studies, or for trade – you must harbor hatred for them while living amongst them.' Islamist refugees in Europe carry with them fatwas that allow them to live in the abode of war out of necessity, on the condition that they do it harm.
"The difficulty Muslims have in assimilating into non-Muslim societies is due to this culture of hatred, which they imbibe in the schools and from the media in their countries. Thus it is necessary to stop training the European Islamic religious cadres in this autistic and racist jurisprudence, which is an expression of the ethnocentrism so widespread among primitive tribes and peoples."
On the Difference Between Cultural Pluralism and Cultural Insularism
"MM: Why do you reject the thought of cultural pluralism and communitarianism?
"LL: The [kind of] cultural pluralism that means peaceful coexistence among cultures joined by the common denominator of rationalism and humanism is a benefit to humanity. The rejection of communitarianism – i.e. the insularism of each religious group and the violation of the common human [denominator] – is the rejection of the jurisprudence of terrorism. It is the rejection of the jurisprudence of al-wala w'al-bara, which demands that Muslims 'love themselves only' and 'hate the infidels.' [The rejection of communitarianism] is the rejection of the hijab, and this [in itself] is the rejection of al-wala w'al-bara.
"The Al-Qaeda jurisprudent Al-Qahtani wrote in his book Al-Wala W'Al-Bara that [the principle of] al-wala w'al-bara demands that the Muslim 'strive to establish God's word on earth and the rule of the shari'a over every situation.' The hijab, being an application of the shari'a laws of dress, is a symbol of the shari'a's rule over every Muslim's daily life. It is also a symbol of the inferiority of the Muslim woman who is 'deficient in her mind and in her religion'; and it is a symbol of her body being something shameful that must be covered as one covers things shameful. Is there any humiliation to women greater than this humiliation?"
It is Crazy to Think That the Mosque Can Be Brought Into French Schools, When the French Took the Church Out of Them in 1905
"MM: Is the hijab really a religious obligation in Islam?
"LL: The pro-hijab propagandists from the French Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters among those living [in France], all of whom are thoroughly infused with the jurisprudence of al-wala w'al-bara, [become] autistic when they plug their ears against the proofs [that argue] against the hijab.
October 2, 2007
No. 1729
Tunisian Reformist Lafif Lakhdar: European Muslims Should Adopt Universal Values; There is Only One Civilization; The Koranic Verse on Wife-Beating Should Be Abrogated; When Bourquiba Abolished Polygamy in Tunisia, the Majority of Women Were Opposed; Why Bring the Mosque into French Schools When the Church Has Been Taken Out of Them; To Respect Muslims' Religious Freedom to Beat Their Wives and Circumcise Their Daughters, France Would Have to Violate Human Rights
To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit:
www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD172907.
On September 8, 2007, the liberal Arab e-journal Elaph posted an interview with prominent Arab liberal Lafif Lakhdar by MEMRI Chairman Professor M. Milson. In the interview, Lakhdar outlined his views on Muslims in Europe, Islam and humanism, and Islamism versus secularism, among other topics.
Lafif Lakhdar has been a firsthand witness to many important moments in Middle East history. He was active in the FLN in Paris in the early 1960s, and later became a close advisor to Algeria's first president Ahmed Ben Bella. In 1970, he accompanied the PLO from Jordan to Beirut, and became a prominent figure in Lebanese left-wing circles. Later, disillusioned by the Lebanese civil war, he broke with the left and returned to Paris, where he lives to this day.(1)
The following are excerpts from the interview:(2)
European Muslims Should Adopt Universal Values In Order to Revive and Renew Their Own Tradition
"Menahem Milson: What is the meaning of the ideological struggle we see raging today among Muslims in Europe?
"Lafif Lakhdar: Two basic tendencies are struggling against one another within European Islam. The first is the tendency that holds fast to Muslims' cultural independence with regard to European societies, and retains Islamic traditions in their entirety – among them those that conflict with the major universal humanistic values of European societies, such as equality of the sexes, secularism, and individual liberty.
"The second tendency, and the one to which I subscribe, demands the opposite: the cultural assimilation of European Muslims and of those [Muslims] living in Europe into the European societies, and the adoption of [European] universal civilizational values in order to revive and renew their [own] traditional values, most of which are no longer in conformity with the times.
"This assimilation, which is necessary, does not mean that they have to abandon their spiritual values or the best of their social values or their history. It only means that they abandon those traditions that are in contradiction with the values of the International Declaration of Human Rights and the other U.N. conventions that derive from it, such as the Convention on the Elimination of [All Forms of] Discrimination against Women, and the conventions on children's rights and the protection of minorities.
"What gives cause for hope is that, according to the latest survey, the Muslims with the highest percentage of cultural assimilation in France are the Tunisians. This is due in large part to the quality of Tunisian religious education, which has nothing of the culture of hatred for 'infidels,' but rather a culture of moderation that Tunisians absorb through [both] the religious and the political discourses.(3) Unfortunately, this is rare in the lands of Islam."
I Have Demanded the Abrogation of the Koranic Verse on Wife-Beating
"MM: Could you be specific about what you mean when you speak about traditions that conflict with human rights?
"LL: The Islamic values that conflict with human rights, and which Muslims everywhere, and in particular those in Europe, where women enjoy nearly full rights, accept, are, for example, disdain for women and the beating of women, as Koran 4:34 commands: 'Beat them.' I have demanded the abrogation of this verse, i.e., that it not be put into practice, because it is no longer in conformity with the universal values of the age. This year, the Islamic Tunisian historian Mohammed Talbi also demanded its abrogation.
"Likewise, we Muslims need to stop considering the proliferation of children as a religious obligation. We need to stop depriving non-Muslim women married to Muslim men of their rights to guardianship over their children and of inheriting from their Muslim spouses and children. We need to stop the sexual disfigurement of girls through circumcision. We need to stop insisting on women's inequality to men in civil rights, and on polygamy, which is a catastrophe for Muslims in their countries and in the diaspora.
"In France, there are 30,000 polygamous families... with an average of 14.5 children in each family. The rate of [children] failing in school among them is very high, as are the rates of marginalization and delinquency. [On the other hand,] the average [school] success rate among families with no more than five children is close to the general French average."
"In Truth, There is Only... One World Civilization"
"The Islamists often present the counter-argument 'You want to destroy us from the root!' I am conscious of the people's need to be connected to their historical roots, but I propose to Muslims that they maintain a symbolic tie to their roots – for instance, celebrating their holidays and putting into practice their spiritual values. At the same time, I propose that they develop an organic tie with modern civilization, that is, democratic institutions and modern humanistic values and sciences. There is no future for Muslims if they remain outside of [this framework], and particularly if they are against it.
"In truth, there is only... one world civilization. But there are a number of cultures that cannot be accepted [into it] unless they make their traditions, which are at times barbaric, conform to the values of human rights.
"The first tendency , which is actively promoted by the French Islamists and the traditionalist imams – and they are the overwhelming majority – is the dominant one in European Islam. [In fact,] this tendency rejects the appellation 'European Islam,' preferring the appellation 'Islam in Europe' in order to emphasize its cultural independence from the societies in which it lives..."
The European Media Favor Tareq Ramadan Over Secularist Muslim Intellectuals
"MM: From where does the tendency opposed to assimilation draw its strength?
"LL: The tendency opposed to assimilation draws its strength from four basic factors:
"1) The religious discourse – Friday sermons, preaching, private Islamic schools, and the media – is under the monopoly of the supporters of this tendency. Even the European media – the audio-visual media in particular – which looks to be provocative at any price – presents the supporters of this tendency on any and every occasion. [They present] people like Tareq Ramadan, and it is rare for them to present Fathi Bin Salama, or Malek Chebel, or Taher Ben Jelloun, Ghaleb bin Sheikh, [former] Marseilles mufti Soheib Bin Sheikh, Yousef Siddiq, George Trabishi, Hashem Saleh, Mohammed Arkoun, or myself, and dozens of other secularist Muslim intellectuals.
"The Arab media, like Al-Jazeera, Iqra, and Al-Manar [TV], which have a large audience among European Muslims, act in the same manner. The supporters of the secularist tendency are blocked out of these media. 'The Opposite Direction,' the most popular program on Al-Jazeera, has been boycotting me ever since I refuted, on the last show I was on, the claims of the Holocaust deniers.(4) And [Saudi] Prince Khaled Bin Sultan banned me from writing in [the Saudi-owned international Arab newspaper] Al-Hayat in 2001, after I insisted, during an Al-Jazeera program, on the necessity of intervention by international civil society to stop the stoning of Muslim women in Iran.(5)
"2) The second factor is the petrodollars that flow to the supporters of the tendency opposed to assimilation, so that they can have their own press, translate Al-Qaradhawi's books into European languages, and send preachers to the suburbs and all the French cities to stuff the minds of Europe's Muslims with their anti-assimilation propaganda and their incitement to violate the values of human rights.
"3) The third factor is that the organization of Muslims in Europe, and especially in France, favors the tendency opposed to European Islam's assimilation into European societies over the tendency that demands its assimilation."
The Jurisprudence of Al-Wala W'Al-Bara Divides Humanity Into 'Believers' and 'Infidels,' With the Only Relationship Between Them Being War
"4) The fourth factor is the jurisprudence of al-wala w'al-bara, [which states that] allegiance [must be] limited to believers, and [declares] total renunciation of the infidels (polytheists, Jews, and Christians). This jurisprudence is what played a role in forming the religious culture of Europe's Muslims, especially first-generation ones, since they learned this in their countries, from primary school through higher [education].
"Today, this is the jurisprudence broadcast by audio-visual media such as Al-Jazeera, Iqra, and Al-Manar [TV[, which have a large audience among Europe's Muslims. It is [also] spread through Islamist and jihadist websites. The mujahid Sheikh Ayman Al-Zawahiri wrote in his book Knights under the Banner of the Prophet that the spread of the slogan of al-wala w'al-bara among the masses of the Islamic nation is Al-Qaeda's main goal – and not the liberation of Palestine, 'despite its being dear to us.'
"[Al-Zawahiri writes:] 'Making the masses of the Islamic nation understand al-wala w'al-bara will require a long time, and our enemies will not give us that time. Therefore, we must use jihad in Palestine as a means of making the Islamic nation understand al-wala w'al-bara' – in other words, [making them understand] that the Jews and the Christians are our enemies and that we must treat them as enemies, through jihad against them, until we either make them accept Islam, or finish them off...
"Al-wala w'al-bara divides humanity into 'believers' and 'infidels,' with the only relationship between them being [one of] hatred and jihad – that is, war. It divides the world into 'the abode of Islam' and the 'abode of war.' The abode of war, ever since the Crusader wars, has been Europe, and the abode of Islam's relationship to it has been hatred of it and jihad against it. [Al-wala w'al-bara also requires] the total renunciation of the 'infidel' inhabitants' religions, their customs in clothing and food, and their institutions, sciences, and values. [It] considers Muslims who imitate the infidels to be apostates who must be fought and killed.
"The jurisprudence of al-wala w'al-bara forbids living in the abode of war for more than three days, unless this is necessary for trade, medical treatment, or studies 'in useful branches of science that are found only in the lands of the infidels.' But [even this] permission to live in the infidel lands is contingent upon the Muslim remaining devoted to his religion, taking pride in it, and hating the infidels.
"Saudi students learn: 'If you live in the infidel lands – in order to receive medical treatment, for studies, or for trade – you must harbor hatred for them while living amongst them.' Islamist refugees in Europe carry with them fatwas that allow them to live in the abode of war out of necessity, on the condition that they do it harm.
"The difficulty Muslims have in assimilating into non-Muslim societies is due to this culture of hatred, which they imbibe in the schools and from the media in their countries. Thus it is necessary to stop training the European Islamic religious cadres in this autistic and racist jurisprudence, which is an expression of the ethnocentrism so widespread among primitive tribes and peoples."
On the Difference Between Cultural Pluralism and Cultural Insularism
"MM: Why do you reject the thought of cultural pluralism and communitarianism?
"LL: The [kind of] cultural pluralism that means peaceful coexistence among cultures joined by the common denominator of rationalism and humanism is a benefit to humanity. The rejection of communitarianism – i.e. the insularism of each religious group and the violation of the common human [denominator] – is the rejection of the jurisprudence of terrorism. It is the rejection of the jurisprudence of al-wala w'al-bara, which demands that Muslims 'love themselves only' and 'hate the infidels.' [The rejection of communitarianism] is the rejection of the hijab, and this [in itself] is the rejection of al-wala w'al-bara.
"The Al-Qaeda jurisprudent Al-Qahtani wrote in his book Al-Wala W'Al-Bara that [the principle of] al-wala w'al-bara demands that the Muslim 'strive to establish God's word on earth and the rule of the shari'a over every situation.' The hijab, being an application of the shari'a laws of dress, is a symbol of the shari'a's rule over every Muslim's daily life. It is also a symbol of the inferiority of the Muslim woman who is 'deficient in her mind and in her religion'; and it is a symbol of her body being something shameful that must be covered as one covers things shameful. Is there any humiliation to women greater than this humiliation?"
It is Crazy to Think That the Mosque Can Be Brought Into French Schools, When the French Took the Church Out of Them in 1905
"MM: Is the hijab really a religious obligation in Islam?
"LL: The pro-hijab propagandists from the French Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters among those living [in France], all of whom are thoroughly infused with the jurisprudence of al-wala w'al-bara, [become] autistic when they plug their ears against the proofs [that argue] against the hijab.