ISLAM HIJACKED

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In these days of rage and resentment over the terrorist abomination in
America, perhaps the most difficult thing to appreciate is how the world's Arabs and Muslims must feel.

As the investigation zeroes in on Osama bin Laden, millions of Arabs and Muslims have also been caught in the dragnet of suspicion. Even as leaders, from the U.S. president on down, eloquently condemn any mentality of group blame, disturbing incidents of harassment are on the rise.

We cannot be more clear about this: Backlash against innocent people only compounds this shocking crime. It does not solve it.

It is a tragedy that along with four planeloads of passengers, the name of Islam, a great world religion and civilization, was also hijacked by fanatics this week.

To put this in its proper perspective, consider the following: Ordinary Protestants in Canada cannot fathom the kind of hatred that would driveanyone who nominally shares their faith to throw pipe bombs at Irish schoolgirls. And yet these people are presented in the media as Protestants.

Or, to put this in secular terms, how could any patriotic American devise so dastardly a plot as to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma City?

Well, the truth is, this week's monstrous acts in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania were as un-Islamic as the Oklahoma City bombing was un-American.

Any Muslim will tell you so. It is a pity that many of us in the West who invoke the name of Islam in the blame game know far too little about it.

Many of us do not realize, for example, that we owe the survival of Western civilization in large part to Islam. Had Islamic scholars not rescued the writings of Greek philosophers, they would never have found their way back to us during the Renaissance.

Few of us realize how pivotal Islamic civilization was in the development of commerce, art, architecture, engineering, science, mathematics, medicine. Hospitals, where one could provide competent care for the sick and prevent them from infecting others, were a gift of Islamic civilization. Islam has a proud tradition of humanitarianism and social justice. The prophet Mohammed led the way. When in AD 630, he finally conquered his enemies who had run him out of Mecca, he did not exact bloody revenge as was the tribal custom at the time. He shocked them with his mercy.

Many of the Muslim conquerors who followed in his footsteps, notably Saladin, were among the most magnanimous victors of their time. Christians and Jews under Muslim domination were respectfully treated as "people of the Book," as the Qur'an puts it.

In fact, Islam has demonstrated far more tolerance for other religions than Christendom did during the vast majority of its 2,000-year history.

By the standards of the time, the Crusaders were European religious terrorists who attacked a far more advanced and enlightened civilization.

This is not just ancient history. George Bush Sr. was quite correct in stressing Thursday that Muslims believe "in a God of love and mercy."

Of course, there is no denying that in Islamic countries, there is profound resentment against the West and the United States for their wealth and power, for their pervasive, perceived "decadent" culture, as well as for their support of Israel.

But distinctions must be made here. Islam is often confused with Arab nationalism, although many Arab leaders, like their Western counterparts, dip their swords in religion when it suits them. As in
Northern Ireland, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is primarily tribal, not religious.

Islam spans diverse cultures. There are millions of Muslims who are not Arabs, like Iranians, Pakistanis, Turks and Indonesians. There are many Arabs who are not Muslims. There is no such thing as a single Muslim, or Arab, view of the world. In the shorthand of journalism, one will never be able to escape labels such as Protestant, Arab or Islamic. But in our minds, let us please peel off those labels and look at who lives beneath.