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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 511
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WCL 511 March 2006
Islam and the world community
To a world citizen, the Islamic idea of the “umma” or community of believers is impressive and attractive. If all the faithful can see themselves as equal in the sight of Allah and equal rights shared responsibilities, this has echoes for others than Muslims. It corresponds well with the idea of world community, which needs world citizens, although its acceptance must be tempered by the fact that it is exclusive - only believers are thought to be included. But other aspects of the Faith may be less acceptable.
The suggestion that apostates, all those who change their beliefs and no longer are Muslim, can be punished and even put to death, is intolerable to those who believe that human beings must be free to choose. If God wishes to punish them, let Him do so: do not presume to decide and act for Him. Nor can we accept that it is the duty or the right of believers to punish words that they consider to be blasphemy. Again, an omnipotent God is capable of punishing whoever offends him: he hardly requires the puny help of witch-hunters.
The apparent contradictions in Muslim practice sometimes appear to an outsider as startling. When the Iranian revolution took place, the often blood-curdling pronouncements of the Ayatollah Khomenei were invariable prefaced by intonations to Allah “the Compassionate, the Merciful” although displaying little sign of humanity, let alone compassion or mercy. This seemingly indicated a lack of sense of proportion to say the least.
In the midst of serious questioning by Muslims of the validity of western values and attitudes, which often include sweeping claims for the superiority of Islam, both as a way of life and a faith, there are causes for doubt. The only officially declared war - and a very bloody one at that - took place between two Muslim states. The Iran-Iraq war was disastrous, bitter and inconclusive. It was waged by a largely Shia conscript army against another Shia army with few if any recorded protests by the soldiers against their ruler.
Nor are the “two and seventy jarring sects” of Islam willing to keep their differences within the peace and brotherhood that the religion enjoins upon its followers. The present fears of civil war in Iraq are prompted by the knowledge of the hostility of the Shia majority for their former Sunni oppressors during the time of Saddam Hussein's despotic rule. The Shia Muslims are viewed as heretics by many Sunnis, irrespective that they worship the same god and revere the same holy book.
Cultural differences may lie at the root of the different attitudes of Muslim men to their women, but it is not easy to reconcile, say, the political leadership of women in Indonesia and even in Pakistan, with politics of Saudi Arabia. And in Afghanistan, the rule of the Taliban, justified as religious duty, could hardly correspond in any way to the beliefs of many Muslim women in countries as diverse as Egypt or Lebanon, let alone in European countries; or even, one might add, as the picture of women around the Prophet Mohammed himself.
All in all, world citizens, if they happen to be Muslim, will probably find it necessary to distinguish between their political and social lives and the religious rules by which they feel they must live. We are all now members of one or more minorities in the world community and it will be better for all of us to learn to adapt and recognize that we shall only be in a majority if we consider ourselves not as black, white, brown or yellow. Nor as Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim or of any other religion but simply see ourselves as human - and world citizens.
John Roberts
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