Islam must rise to the challenge of the warmongers within its ranks
According to the article, religious leaders are terrified that such an important site could become the object of devotional worship, rather like Knock or Lourdes in the Catholic world. The Saudi authorities believe that such devotions are idolatrous.
Given the reverence which Muslims have for their holy places, such a report seems barely credible. But already certain ancient buildings in Mecca, and in Islam’s other holy city, Medina, have met the same fate. The house of Mohammed’s grandson, Ali-Oraid, has already been bulldozed to prevent it from becoming a pilgrimage site.
According to one Saudi architect, Dr Sami Angawi, these attacks mark “the last days of Mecca and Medina.” So troubled is Dr Angawi that he has kept secret the location of a number of other historical sites in the holy cities to prevent them from being destroyed.
This cultural desecration is similar to the destruction of ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan in 2000 by the Taliban, which outraged many scholars.
And indeed there is a connection. The Taliban followed the same brand of austere Islam which is followed by the religious authorities in Saudi Arabia - ie, Wahabism.
This also happens to be the version of Islam followed by the al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden, and other radical Islamists such as Sheikh Omar Bakri, whose Irish disciple, Khalid Kelly, recently reiterated that Ireland is now “a likely target” for terror attacks after the London atrocities.
The irony of Muslims destroying Muslim holy places comes full circle when we recall that one of the principal reasons bin Laden launched his jihad against the United States was Uncle Sam’s “desecration” of the holy cities by his military presence in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War. Bin Laden’s definition of desecration, it seems, is as idiosyncratic as his concept of a legitimate target. Hopefully, the majority of the people he claims to represent will come to believe that the kind of world he wants to create for them is not one in which they want to live. The cultural vandalism envisaged in the destruction of Mohammed’s birthplace is indicative of a profound ignorance of history, art, heritage and beauty.
Behind the obsessive fear of idolatry lies a complete lack of balance. We see the total fanaticism of radical Islam, unable even to appreciate its own past, laid bare.
It also highlights an issue which has received little attention in the wake of the atrocities in London some weeks ago. It demonstrates the extent to which Islam itself must come up with answers to confront the radicals in its midst. We are frequently told by Muslims that Islam is a religion of peace.
World leaders such as George W Bush and Tony Blair go out of their way to point out that the terrorists who have murdered thousands of innocents do not represent Islam. They are right to do so. The vast majority of Muslims hanker after peace and security every bit as much as the rest of us.
But as much as moderate Muslims need to face down those of their brethren who would destroy holy places of priceless value to all of humanity, they also need to leave extreme Muslims in no doubt that acts of terrorism do not speak for Islam, and that the perpetrators will get no shelter and no moral support from the people who love Allah.
Commentators, both left wing and right wing, seem to over-emphasise the extent to which the problem is rooted, and solvable, in the western world.
The left tells us there is great anger in the Islamic world over American foreign policy. But radical Islam has been engaged in a brutal and indiscriminate attack on the west for years. Al-Qaida attempted to bring down the World Trade Centre back in 1993. The issue of the Palestinians held little of interest to Bin Laden prior to 9/11.
And who exactly is al-Qaida attacking anyway? Most of the people being killed by radical Muslims in Iraq today are fellow Muslims. In more ways than one, the man on the white horse has a funny definition of legitimate target.
Conservatives such as David Davis, a contender for the leadership of the UK Tory Party, emphasise the failure of Muslim immigrants to the west to integrate properly.
Certainly the multicultural approach, which holds that all cultures and traditions are equally valid and which therefore shies away from imposing social or linguistic norms, has led to the failure of many Muslims and their children to integrate into their host societies. As a result, many are alienated. Lacking understanding of, or loyalty towards, their new country, they make easy prey for those with a radical agenda.
So when Mr Davis points out that Muslims have a duty to their fellow non-Muslim citizens “to confront rather than simply condemn” radical Islam, he is perfectly correct. An overly simplistic version of multiculturalism weakens the sense of loyalty that an immigrant community owes to its host nation. And social cohesion is damaged eventually.
But ultimately questions have to be asked within global Islam itself.
Prominent Muslim religious leaders must ask why their religion has been hijacked by radicals, and what is it within their own culture that allows such poison to fester. For the west to assume that it can simply solve the problem by either amending its foreign policy or doing a better job of integrating immigrants is to underestimate one of the great world religions.
Sadly, some of Islam’s own leaders do a great job of doing just that. The chairman of Birmingham’s central mosque, Mohammad Naseem, denied that Muslims were behind the bombings in London, and said that he did not trust the CCTV footage which identified the bombers. The comment betrays a frightening inability to contemplate the naked truth. Bart Simpson made famous the child’s excuse of ‘I didn’t do it.’ But it’s not funny when a Muslim leader goes into similar denial about something so terrible.
One of the foremost scholars on Islam, Bernard Lewis, in his book, What Went Wrong, points out that, in the medieval era, Islam was pre-eminent culturally, politically and militarily. As late as 1683, Islamic forces were on the brink of conquering Vienna, right in the heart of Christian Europe.
The decline of Islam since those heady days is marked. Lewis believes the root of this decline was the unwillingness, or the inability of Islam to incorporate ideas from outside its own culture. While it was prepared to use western technologies, such as firearms, it was unable to see anything else of value within western culture, and so it made no attempt to learn from it. The results for Islam have been catastrophic.
Today, Islam needs to find the resources within itself to combat extremism.
This time around, has it got the capacity to self-analyse and self-criticise which it so desperately needs?
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