By Joseph A. Klein, CFP United Nations Columnist ——Bio and Archives--February 26, 2015
Guns-Crime-Terror-Security | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
“The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam…” “Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, ‘embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion’ that neglects ‘what their religion has historically and legally required…’” “In Haykel’s estimation, the fighters of the Islamic State are authentic throwbacks to early Islam and are faithfully reproducing its norms of war. This behavior includes a number of practices that modern Muslims tend to prefer not to acknowledge as integral to their sacred texts. ‘Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,’ Haykel said. Islamic State fighters ‘are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.’”The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations High Representative Nasser refused the opportunity, in response to my question, to comment on Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s call recently at al-Azhar University, the seat of Sunni Islam, for reform within the Islamic faith. El-Sisi told the assembled imams and religious scholars that the destructive interpretations of the Koran and Islam, blessed over the years by Muslim religious leaders and scholars from Islam’s earliest days until the present time, were the root cause of the antagonism of much of the rest of the world against Islam today. Mr. Nasser replied that he was not speaking in defense of Islam or any other religion, but then proceeded later to blame the media for being irresponsible in its “insults” of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. It’s not clear whether he would include President el-Sisi in his condemnations of such “insults.” UNAOC’s High Representative repeatedly stressed the importance of education to steer the most vulnerable youths away from extremism, but failed to move beyond bland generalities. He should have taken a cue from Sheikh Dr. Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, who delivered a speech in Mecca, Saudi Arabia on February 22nd, urging reform in religious education to deal with “historical accumulations of tendencies of extremism in our heritage, which originated from corrupt interpretations of some of the texts of the Quran and the Sunnah [the teachings of Prophet Muhammad].” Parenthetically, the Sheikh would do well to take his own advice, since he has reportedly used the Koran in the past to justify expressions of anti-Semitism. Mr. Nasser also refused to answer any questions regarding the role of his own country, Qatar, in funding Islamic jihadist organizations. Moreover, left unsaid was the fact that Qatar provides sanctuary to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual mentor of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist scholar, who has issued fatwas justifying death sentences for apostasy and statements calling for the killing of Jews. In short, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations is as clueless as the Obama administration in dealing with the ideological threat posed by Islamic jihadism, which has its seeds in deeply rooted interpretations of Islam’s sacred texts. Its adherents and sympathizers, who potentially number in the hundreds of millions, are impervious to anything resembling reason, shared humanity, or indeed the sanctity of life itself. To pretend otherwise is tantamount to conscious malignant neglect on the part of the United Nations and the Obama administration.
View Comments
Joseph A. Klein is the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom.