DELACERNA
Prof. Henry Francis Espiritu, Associate Professor in Philosophy and Asian History of UP Cebu, a prolific Islam scholar, and a strong advocate of peace and inter-faith dialogue, prefers to call the phenomenon “Islamic Extremism” or “Politicized Islam” rather than “Islamic Fundamentalism” in his lectures and papers on the phenomenon of Muslim fundamentalism.
In religious sociology, fundamentalism is laying emphasis on strict adherence to the fundamental principles of any set of beliefs.
It was originally applied to a particular group of Christian theologians in the US who published a series of booklets on the absolute fundamentalism of the doctrine of Christianity and its supporters in a debate in 1920 were called fundamentalists.
Fundamentalism was applied to the Islamic resurgence in the final quarter of the twentieth century.
Prof. Espiritu cites Islamic Fundamentalism as applied to two different kinds of movement.
The first kind is a return to the pristine fundamentals of the faith and aims at putting an end to additions and innovations in religious matters and replace them with the original form of Islamic shariah.
The second kind is the Muslim Brotherhood which rose to bring about a political revolution in Muslim countries and aims at putting end to non-Muslim political set-up and replace that with an Islamic political set-up.
The first kind is a struggle against innovation confined only to matters of belief and worship, so there is no violence.
It is aimed at and concerned with the internal reform of Muslims, and there is no conflict with non-Muslims.
The other kind is directed from the outset against political rulers whether the inevitable confrontations have been with Muslims on non-Muslims.
The very nature of such a movement has demanded the use of violence.
Hence, this is where the principle of “jihad” is distorted and bent to political ends.
Espiritu stresses that nowhere is “jihad” used in the Qur’an to mean waging of war for the spirit of the Qur’an dwells on peace and tolerance.
Ideological hatred is the greatest crime, according to Prof. Espiritu, for it generates unlimited violence.
It can kill all of humanity without suffering any feeling of remorse or repentance.
Adherents of the violent movement consider those who are not like-minded to be their “enemies” and are obstacles to their success and therefore necessary to destroy them altogether.
Religious terrorism is a movement of the second type. As a result of this negative thinking they divide humanity into two camps — their enemies and their friends.
Once making the decision, they allow their aversion for their “enemies into virulent hatred.”
Owing to this negative attitude all the activities of any religious fundamentalists take on a pernicious direction — religious terrorism.
To make matters worse, the hatred felt by religious fundamentalists has become inseparable from their ideology.
They hate others who think differently from themselves because they hold them to be ideologically in error.
At present, Muslim fundamentalists are responsible for actions resulting from hatred and marked by violence taking place in the name of Islam, thus hijacking the beautiful teachings of Islam to an ideology of hate and violence.
They hold that Islam is meant to establish an ideal society and an ideal state.
Since this task cannot be performed without political strength, they feel justified in fighting against those who have captured the seats of power. Violent movements (with this aim) were launched on a large scale during the second half of the twentieth century.
Targets were either non-Muslim rulers or secular Muslim rulers.
Despite the great losses in terms of life, wealth and resources, these movements failed to produce any political results.
Fanaticism is the driving force of any kind of fundamentalism. Muslim fundamentalism converted the image of Islam into an ugly one tarnished by violence.
Prof. Espiritu provides a historical perspective of this phenomenon.
At the time of the emergence of modern western civilization, the greater part of the world was dominated by Muslims.
These Muslim empires came into direct conflict with the western empires and, in the long run, the Muslim empires were vanquished.
Muslims all over the world came to hold that in the break-up of their empires, the upholders of western civilization were the oppressors, while the Muslims were the oppressed. Internal degeneration was also occurring.
The Muslim world became averse to the western nations, earlier the British and French, later the USA since the US led western nations at the end of World War II in colonizing Muslim countries.
The defeatist mentality or besieged or a “fortress mentality” opts for a negative course of action.
The possessors of this mentality are the oppressed and set themselves against their oppressors.
Bent of mind, they are willing to engage themselves in any activity no matter how damaging to humanity or contrary to religion it might be.
A direct result of this negative psychology was the emergence of certain Muslim leaders in the first half of the twentieth century, who expounded their own political interpretation of Islam according to which Islam was a complete system of State and Muslims had been appointed by God to fulfill a mission of establishing the Islamic state throughout the world.
Some well-known names associated with this interpretation are Syed Qutub in Egypt, Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, and Syed Abul Ala Maududi in Pakistan.
This political view of Islam, in spite of being a grave misinterpretation, spread rapidly among Muslims.
Paradoxically, they are backed by funding from America in a bid to stem the rise of communism.
Prior to 1991, when Soviet Union assumed position of a super power, and posed a continuing threat to America, one of the strategies adopted by America was to set off the Muslim fundamentalists against Communists, because these fundamentalists were persistently writing and speaking against communism as the enemy of Islam.
America also gave all kinds of help to the fundamentalists.
It provided them with weapons to set themselves against the Soviet Union and assisted in the dissemination of their literature all over the world.
The formula — “enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend” — proved counterproductive for it replaced one enemy with another.
Prof. Espiritu enjoins us to undertake the task to make use of the media on all fronts in order to make people aware of the fact that this political interpretation of Islam is totally with basis either in the Qur’an or in the examples set by the Prophet in thought, word, and deed.
It is true that in these violent activities only a small group is involved, but this small group has the indirect support of the majority who are no less swayed by the political interpretation of Islam.
But Prof. Espiritu is hopeful “If then the majority were to withdraw its indirect support and condemn Islamic militancy, these fringe groups would lose their moral courage.
That would be the first step.
Then the time would come when the fundamentalists themselves who are directly involved in violent activities would abandon the path of violence altogether.”