Islam and Collectivism in America

A consortium of North American Islamic Associations recently issued a fatwa (religious ruling) against terrorism, hoping that pious Muslims will accept their interpretation of Islam and refrain from violence, refuse to collaborate with violent people and willingly cooperate with the loving agents of the Department of Homeland Security. http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=1675&theType=NR

While I applaud them for their efforts, I wonder what took so long. Where were the self-appointed leaders of Islam when the Taliban were massacring women and the villagers of the Sudan and Egypt were cutting off women's clits? Where is the fatwa that condemns the gang rape of a young woman in Pakistan ordered by a religious council as punishment for her brother's transgression with a girl from a different village?

Where were they? Hiding. Not a peep because those issues and many like them don't affect Muslim men.

A few years ago, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an Islamic advocacy group, complained when Oprah did a show about female circumcision (a practice in many Islamic countries) because the show was going to make Islam look bad. I wrote to the director of the group suggesting a different approach. Oprah isn't making Islam look bad; Muslims are doing a fine job of that themselves. If female circumcision is un-Islamic, then why not expend the energy to educate Muslims about their religion instead of attempting to suppress legitimate journalism? His response was brilliant. He called me kaffir, which means infidel, and told me I am either with them or against them (maybe that's where GW got the phrase).

The arrogance and sexism of these leaders was the hallmark of the Islamic community until September 11 introduced a bit of humility.

It was only after September 11 that these cowardly "leaders" suddenly took an interest in "fairness" and civil liberties. They never had anything to say about the racism, sexism and rampant classism within their own community, but once America's rage was turned toward them, they became the outspoken proponents of individualism, i.e. that a group should not be punished for the acts of a few. I truly doubt those cowardly Muslim "leaders" would have condemned September 11 or the London bombings if they didn't think there would be more hate crimes that could affect them personally.

Now they scramble to describe "terrorists" as extremists who hijacked an otherwise peaceful religion. Hijacked from whom? The extremists who rule Saudi Arabia? The unified rhetoric from the Islamic leaders is "those people aren't Muslim." But if they aren't Muslim, what are they? No answer. And, who died and made these yahoos the big cheeses who get to distinguish between the real Muslims and the imposters? I thought that was god's job to figure out.

More importantly, the futile attempt to disassociate some killers from the Islamic community illustrates the deep-seated collectivism hard-wired into most people. Because these cowardly Islamic leaders think that people should be punished based upon the group into which they are categorized (gender, race, religion, etc.), they attempt to remove the stain of violence created by "those" people rather than accept that every group in made up of individuals with different motivations, beliefs and sins. I don't understand why the Islamic community cannot say, "yes, they are Muslims, but they are violating the tenets of the religion and will answer to god for their crimes."

White Americans don't have this collectivist problem. Ask a White person why he disagrees with affirmative action and he will tell you (1) it's not fair, and (2) he shouldn't be punished for racism he did not perpetrate. Ask a White person why she is against reparations and she will say it's because she shouldn't have to pay for crimes she did not commit. Individual Whites don't apologize for the KKK. Fair enough.

Each person is an individual and should be respected as such. So why are individual Muslims expected to apologize and beg for forgiveness everytime someone in the 1.2 billion community commits a crime? Why are Muslims and everyone else willing to go along with the notion that Whites are individuals but Muslims are not? Offering canned condemnations and trite cliche excuses does not fix anything or make anyone safer. If blowing up subways really is un-Islamic, a better use of energy and resources in the Islamic community would be to educate those who are so woefully misinterpreting god's word. The fatwa is at least a miniscule start.