Muslims around the world have been deceived by the idea that the West and America are the enemies of Islam, and that they are modern day Crusaders who want to destroy Islam and to subjugate them. But what Muslims have failed to understand all along is that the real enemies of Islam are within Islam. I would argue that the real enemy of Islam is not the West, not the United States, not the Jews, not Donald Trump, but Islam’s worst enemies are Muslims themselves. They are the ones using religion for their own gain. When someone points out these facts of truth, they conveniently condemn them as an enemy of Islam or call them Islamaphobic.Muslims should look in the mirror and face the inescapable facts. They should do some soul searching and ask themselves why Muslims fail to be united against the tyranny of Bashir Al- Assad. It is time to ask how, in the modern world of the twenty-first century, the Muslim world has produced ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Osama Bin Laden, and many other of the world’s most brutal demagogues. Why do most of the terrorist groups call themselves Muslims? It is true that religion should not sanction the killing of innocent people, especially women and children, least of all Islam. According to Muslims, Islam was sent down as a blessing for the whole of humanity, demolishing all false distinctions of color, race, gender, and social background. But what went wrong? Why is it that Muslims are killing fellow Muslims? Remember the decades long war between Iraq and Iran, and, as a result, millions of people died for nothing. Why do hopeful movements fail? For example, an Islamic movement in Turkey, such as the Gulen Movement, and in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood represented hope, the language of justice, interfaith dialogue, peace, equality, and the ideal of self-reliance for the masses languishing in misery. But when they got power, the Gulen movement became a mirror image of what they were fighting. The leadership passed from a promotion of love, tolerance, justice, rule of law, and respect for democracy to thirst for power, hate, and demagoguery. The movement attempted a coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of Turkey, the AKP party, and the current President Erdogan, illegally eavesdropping on many bureaucrats and the business community, using fabricated evidence and forged signatures of secular military generals to put them in jail, so that they could replace them with their own people to implement their own ideology.
In short, what those Islamic movements have produced are fanatics that are as autocratic, illiberal, and disrespectful of democracy and rule of law, as the established order they seek to dethrone. The failure of the Gulen Islamic movement in Turkey and the Brotherhood in Egypt is that instead of engaging with the abundant problems, they struggle to take power and oppress the others who disagree with them; they want people to blindly follow them in slavish submission to them. Open debate, political conversations, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equality, tolerance, respect–these are the obvious remedies, but the Islamic movements have become a barrier to them. For example, most Muslims will refer to humility, but humility means acknowledging one’s own mistakes and shortcomings. Yet, they never stoop to such an admission.
Clearly the Islamic world has serious problems, and the sooner they confront them, the better it will be for everyone. They cannot go on deceiving themselves that all is well and that everything is all a part of a grand conspiracy. Muslims do nothing irregular. Terrorism is a very serious problem for Muslims because most of the terrorist attacks actually happens within Muslims countries; for example, this past Sunday’s bombing in Ankara was the third attack that targeted the Turkish capital in recent months. According to the Health Minister, the death toll has risen to 37, whereas 71 were still being treated at the hospitals. In Eastern Turkey there is a war between the militants of the Kurdish group the PKK and the Turkish military that have made the life of ordinary Muslims a living hell. ISIS is far from fighting to establish an Islamic Caliphate. It is nothing more than a band of ruthless kidnappers who kill other Muslims without hesitation. The Ivory Coast, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey, Sudan, Yemen, Algeria, Malawi, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, there is a hardly a Muslim country that is not plagued by terrorism. Terror and counterterrorism are an endless cycle that has cost so many Muslim lives.
Yet, Muslims have continued to refuse to see terrorism as an internal problem. While so many countries suffer, they have blamed everyone but themselves. It is always the same story, the West, Mossad, or the CIA, thus hatching yet another conspiracy. This kind of state of denial means Muslims are not ready to deal with the serious problem of terrorism. The sectarian violence by the government between Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims against their own people has now become such an integral part of the political discourse of failed reality in the Muslim world. Muslims should declare Jihad not against infidels or Jews but against those who kill Muslims. That is the real Jihad for which to risk their faith if they believe their faith has nothing to do with violence and terrorism but rather is about peace, love, and tolerance.
First, I am very saddened by the hundreds of Syrians daily being killed by their Islamic brothers in Iran, Hezbollah and ISIS, especially because most of those killed are women and children. Millions of Syrians have been displaced to live in another country. When I visited the Middle East, I saw images of desperate fathers running into hospitals holding their dead and injured children in their arms, blood stains everywhere, and distraught women weeping for their children and their lost love ones. I see the same images in Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan, Indonesia, Somalia, Libya, Lebanon, Palestine, and even in the Philippines. From Nigeria to Syria to Egypt to Saudi Arabia Muslims are killing Muslims. Islam is in a PR crisis and fighting for power. Each one of the groups thinks it is the best representative of Islam, and that others should submit to their rules.
Throughout history, there have been periods when terror and anarchy have intensified, posing a threat to societies. Today in Muslim societies the great majority has very little knowledge about their beliefs and seldom examine their religion and spiritual values. The majority of Muslims in the world are ignorant about their own faith having picked it up secondhand. It is impossible for them to translate their religion properly into morality in its true sense. There are 57 Muslims states around the world and more than 1.2 billion Muslims.
Muslims have had the means through their oil and gas to do everything that Islam demands. The problem is that every single one of those countries is well endowed with oil and gas, but the rulers have used these resources in a large part to enrich themselves and their cronies. It is true poverty that prevents people from having a proper education and therefore breeds ignorance. It also makes Muslims feel weak and thus feeds both frustrations and radicalizations. There is also internal conflict within the Muslim world. When Muslims can reach no agreement on basic values, usually they end up in conflict and civil wars. Muslims need to be the master of knowledge in the age in which they live. History shows that unification and harmony in the Islamic world is the only way to bring peace.
Almost every religion consists of teachings and commands that concern our earthly existence; it is our origin, our meaning, and the way we should conduct our daily life while living on this earth. Almost every religion tries to give some explanation and hope about what will happen to us when we die. Not all Muslims or Arabs are terrorists. But to pretend that Islam has nothing to do with violence and terrorism is to willfully ignore the obvious and to forever misinterpret events. The West needs to understand Muslims, and Muslims need to understand the West in order to be able to deal with each other to avoid mistakes.
Neither civilized society nor true faith can permit blind attacks on innocent people. Most of the time we hear from our good Muslims friends telling the West that the perpetrators are confusing Islam with Islamic fundamentalism. The success of the Islamic world depends on the unification of Muslims all around the world by their transcending ethnic, sectarian, social, and economic disputes. Because the Muslim world holds the world’s major, rich resources such as water, gas and oil, the ideological struggle against terrorism must be a matter of urgency and must include great numbers of people. The struggle will be fought on the level of ideas, between people who believe in the religion of peace, equality, love, morality, equal justice, tolerance, forgiving, compassions, and respect and those who draw their strength from arrogance, violence, ignorance, and power to dominate.
Dr. Aland Mizell is President of the MCI and a regular contributor to Mindanao Times. You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com