The Economist picks up the theme of the important move against the jihadists by prominent Islamist figures over the last month, with special emphasis on the Amman conference rejecting the practice of takfir:
In several ways, the muftis and professors agreed to minimise their own (previously sharp) differences and work together to promote what they regard as “good theology” over some superficial, violence-promoting interpretations of Islam that have circulated, electronically and in print, all over the world. Among the scholars' main conclusions is that nobody who accepts Islam's basic beliefs should be denied the label of Muslim. A statement of the obvious? Far from it, because a hallmark of virtually all the shrillest voices in Islam is that they reject the Muslim credentials of anybody who disagrees with them. As an example of a Muslim thinker who rejects anybody less extreme than himself as an apostate, many would cite Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian who is one of the leaders of al-Qaeda.
A couple of thoughts here. One, it's astounding that some people who really should know better seem to have entirely missed the point of the Amman conference, and saw this as a refusal to declare Osama bin Laden a non-Muslim, rather than as the rejection of bin Laden's jurisprudence which it was. Two, it's vital that it is precisely the much-abused "moderate Islamists" like Yusuf al-Qaradawi who lend this conference its importance. If it had just been a bunch of anonymous figures with no social influence, it wouldn't have mattered much. But three, as Dan Murphy pointed out a few weeks ago, don't expect this to have much influence on the radicals themselves - they are well beyond listening to Qaradawi or anyone else. The impact will come on the ability fo the radicals to attract support beyond their own ranks. (also see Murphy's follow-up pieces over the last couple of weeks)
The Economist wraps up with the same questions Murphy ended with:
moderate scholars make a plausible case when they argue that only well-grounded theology can cure the effects of the bad, extremist kind. Still, how much will the Amman decisions resonate with ordinary believers in the so-called Arab street, where many may still be more impressed by al-Qaeda's spectacular actions than the careful thoughts of the greybeards? ...
The Ali Belhadj incident I mentioned yesterday strikes me as an interesting test case of this whole proposition. Belhadj was the popular radical leader of the Algerian FIS back in the early 1990s who spent a decade in jail before being released a couple of years ago. In contrast to the widespread "patriotic" Egyptian response to the killing of the Egyptian ambassador (at least in public and in the media) - in which almost all public commentary condemned his murder and castigated the Iraqi insurgency for carrying it out - and to the near-universal condemnation by Arab governments, the Arab media, and most Islamists (even Jordan's often pro-insurgency Muslim Brotherhood condemned it, according to al-Hayat) - Belhadj sided with the Iraqi insurgency. In an al-Jazeera interview, he approved of the murder of the Algerian diplomats as an appropriate attack by mujahidin against agents of a corrupt and secular Algerian regime. The Algerian government promptly arrested him.
The Ali Belhadj episode leaves us with the same questions I posed yesterday: is Belhadj out of touch with the times, articulating sentiments whose day has passed? Or is he still in touch with the sentiment of some important part of Algerian public opinion? And if so, is the part of the public he's in touch with itself increasingly isolated from the mainstream, so that he's preaching to a fixed and diminishing choir without winning new converts?
For its part, according to al-Sharq al-Awsat, Zarqawi lashed out against everyone who condemned the killing of the Algerian diplomats, saying that "we don't care about your condemnations because we are closer to God than you." This is entirely typical - as I've often noted, such as after Maqdassi's al-Jazeera interview, Zarqawi always argues back against his Muslim critics, and never rolls over and gives up because he's been condemned. It does strike me, though, that Zarqawi has to (and does) engage in a lot more of these kinds of arguments than bin Laden did - a sign of shifting Muslim times? Or a sign of the increased globalization of the media and access to the public sphere, which allows these internal debates to be aired (rather than remaining isolated within a specific geographic location, or within an obscure jihadi website which nobody notices)?
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