WHEN TYROS TAKE UP THE SUBJECT OF ISLAM…A REPONSE BY ANDREW BOSTOM

Posted By on November 5th, 2009

Reply to Rick Brookhiser From A Pre- Post-Modern “Islamist” [Andrew Bostom]

Responding to an e-mail query I posed to him about this original Corner posting on October 26, Rick Brookhiser today, November 3, 2009 , claims “My correspondent [Bostom] and the Islamists [emphasis added] say that Islam is unchanging, because the Koran says so.”

Ignoring any malicious intentions, Mr. Brookhiser has equated me with the wrong “Islamists.” Dedicated students of Islamic doctrine and history such as myself, through at least the mid- 1950s, were still referred to as “Islamists”

In 19th century parlance, Islamism and Islam were synonymous, and meant to be equivalent to “Catholicism,” “Protestantism,” and “Judaism,” not “radical,” or “fundamentalist” sects of any of these religions. For example, John Quincy Adams in “Unsigned essays dealing with the Russo-Turkish War, and on Greece,” written while JQA was in retirement, before his election to Congress in 1830 [Chapters X-XIV (pp. 267-402) in The American Annual Register for 1827-28-29. New York, 1830.], wrote:

“[More from the Ottoman Sultan’s pronouncement to his subjects]…‘all infidels are but one nation…This war must be considered purely a religious and national war. Let all the faithful, rich or poor, great or little, know, that to fight is a duty with us; let them then refrain from thinking of arrears, or of pay of any kind; far from such considerations, let us sacrifice our property and our persons; let us execute zealously the duties which the honor of Islamism imposes on us – let us unite our efforts, and labor, body and soul, for the support of religion, until the day of judgment. Mussulmen have no other means of working out salvation in this world and the next.’”

Sir Henry Layard, the British archeologist, writer, and diplomat (including postings in Turkey), described this abhorrent spectacle which he witnessed in the heart of Istanbul, during the autumn of 1843, four years after the first failed iteration of the Tanzimat reforms:

‘An Armenian who had embraced Islamism [i.e., again, common 19th century usage for Islam] had returned to his former faith. For his apostasy he was condemned to death according to the Mohammedan law. His execution took place, accompanied by details of studied insult and indignity directed against Christianity and Europeans in general. The corpse was exposed in one of the most public and frequented places in Stamboul, and the head, which had been severed from the body, was placed upon it, covered by a European hat.’ [from, Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana, and Babylonia, London, 1887, pp. 454-55.]

And as recently as 1955, in the esteemed scholarly collection edited by renowned Orientalist Gustave E. von Grunebaum, Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization, Chicago, 1955, Dr. Duchesne-Guillemin, (p.5) referred to experts in the study of Islam—not experts in the study of “radical Islam,” let alone practitioners of so-called “radical Islam,” as “Islamists.” Thus both “Islam-ism,” and “Islam-ist,” have both previously been used—with complete, unfettered intellectual honesty not beholden to political correctness—in the former case, as synonymous with “Islam,” (not “radical Islam”), or in the case of the latter, to describe one who studies Islam (again, not “radical Islam.”)

Moreover, Mr. Brookhiser’s glib reply to my e-mail omitted a published essay I had included for his edification. This detailed piece debunks Brookhiser’s rather uninformed assumption that the desire to impose Islamic blasphemy law is somehow limited to a present era “radical” version of Islam, and its cadre of “Islamist” (in Brookhiser’s parlance, “radical Muslim”) votaries. According to Brookhiser’s fatuous conception, “…the practice of Islam changed during the twentieth century, and even in her [i.e., Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s] lifetime, thanks to the evangelizing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the agendas of Saudi Arabia and post-Shah Iran.” Such blandly asserted historical negationism of a more than 1000 year continuum is unacceptable, as these extracts from my essay make plain:

…even in that purely mythical paragon of Islamic ecumenism — Andalusia, Muslim Spain during the Middle Ages (which not only Qaradawi, but legions of “moderate” Muslims openly profess they would like to restore) — Islamic supremacism, as codified in Islamic Law, engendered the same deep-seated, sacralized intolerance that has always predominated under Muslim rule. Already by the end of the eighth century, the rulers of Andalusia (and North Africa) had established rigorous Malikism as the dominant Islamic school of jurisprudence, rendering the Muslim Andalusian state, as noted in historian Evariste Levi-Provencal’s seminal Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane,

“…the defender and champion of a jealous orthodoxy, more and more ossified in a blind respect for a rigid doctrine, suspecting and condemning in advance the least effort of rational speculation.”

Consistent with this historical reality, Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq, a pre-eminent scholar of Muslim Spain, observed that the myriad religious and legal discriminations suffered by non-Muslim dhimmis (i.e., the non-Muslim Iberian populations vanquished by jihad, and governed by Islamic law, Shari’a), included lethal punishments for “blaspheming” the Muslim prophet, or the Koran:

“[For] having insulted the Prophet or blasphemed against the Word of God (i.e., The Koran)-dhimmis were executed.”

A millennium later, Islam’s draconian punishment for infidels accused of blaspheming the Muslim prophet Muhammad persisted, with uncompromising ferocity. French painter Alfred Dehodencq’s striking “Execution of a Moroccan Jewess” is based upon the actual blasphemy execution of a Jewess from Tangier, Morocco, Sol Hachuel, believed to have occurred in 1834. A detailed, near contemporary account of Sol Hachuel’s heroic martyrdom — based upon eyewitness interviews — was published in 1837 by Eugenio Maria Romero.

Accused, falsely, of having become a Muslim, and then “blaspheming” Muhammad, upon adamantly and steadfastly maintaining her Jewish faith (“A Jewess I was born, a Jewess I wish to die”), the 17 year-old Sol was beheaded publicly for both this contrived “apostasy” from Islam, and “blasphemy.” Among the narrative details Romero provides of the young victim’s execution day in Fez is this depiction of how the Muslim masses reacted to the charge of “blasphemy” against her:

“…the streets were crowded with Moors [Muslims] of all ages and sexes, who made the air resound with their discordant cries. “here comes,” said they, ‘she who blasphemed the Prophet — death! death! to the impious wretch’”

Abundant contemporary evidence demonstrates that Islamic law and mores regarding blasphemy, today, remain distressingly incompatible with modern conceptions of religious freedom, and human rights. Thus writing in the early 1990s, the esteemed Pakistani scholar Muhammad Asrar, whose opinion was accepted by Pakistan’s Shari’a Court, defined “blasphemy”, focusing on the Muslim prophet, as:

“Reviling or insulting the Prophet (pbuh) in writing or speech; speaking profanely or contemptuously about him or his family; attacking the Prophet’s dignity and honor in an abusive manner; vilifying him or making an ugly face when his named is mentioned; showing enmity or hatred towards him, his family, his companions, and the Muslims; accusing, or slandering the Prophet and his family, including spreading evil reports about him or his family; defaming the Prophet; refusing the Prophet’s jurisdiction or judgment in any manner; rejecting the Sunnah; showing disrespect, contempt for or rejection of the rights of Allah and His Prophet or rebelling against Allah and His Prophet.”

And in accord with classical Islamic jurisprudence (for example, The Risala of al-Qayrawani [d. 996]), Madani argues that anyone who defames Muhammad — Muslim or non-Muslim — must be put to death. Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo has documented how this orthodox Islamic doctrine — incorporated into the Pakistani legal code (Section 295-C, “defiling the name of Muhammad”) — has wreaked havoc, particularly among Pakistan’s small Christian minority community:

“…the blasphemy law is felt to be a sword of Damocles and has developed a huge symbolic significance which contributes substantially to the atmosphere of intimidation of Christians. The detrimental effect of the law…is most dramatically illustrated by the incident at Shanti Nagar in February 1997 in which tens of thousands of rioting Muslims destroyed hundreds of Christian homes, and other Christian property, following an accusation of blasphemy. Furthermore the blasphemy has engendered a wave of private violence. Equating blasphemy with apostasy and influenced by the tradition of direct violent action and self-help which goes back to the earliest times of Islam, some Muslims feel they are entitled to enforce the death penalty themselves.”

After at least four such murders, and the “blasphemy” case of Ayub Masih (who had been incarcerated in solitary confinement since October 14, 1996 and sentenced to death on April 27, 1998 by Sessions Court Judge Rana Abdul Ghaffar), Bishop John Joseph of Faisalbad committed suicide on May 6 1998, to protest the continued application of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

The doctrinal and historical context for modern Islamic attitudes towards the Danish cartoons—including the recent lethal threats to Kurt Westergaard and Flemming Rose by Chicago-based Muslims—far transcends what Brookhiser terms “Islamism.” But perhaps Brookhiser designates as “Islamists” the entire religious and political leadership of the Organization of the Islamic Conference—fierce contemporary advocates of Islamic blasphemy law (as chronicled for over two decades by historian David Littman), and representative of over a billion Muslims from 57 nations identified as “Islamic.” That would be an intellectually honest way for Brookhiser to initiate his Diogenes-like search for moderate Islam.

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