Middle Eastern Introspection and the Ghost of Righteousness

Yesterday, the New York Times had an article that described some editorials published in the Middle East in the wake of the Russian school massacre as sincere questionings about the role and nature of Islam in the world.

"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims," Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the widely watched satellite television station Al Arabiya said in one of the most striking of these commentaries.

One the one hand, it's about time that some of the poor, poor, pitiful me rhetoric that has been coming out of that region's papers shifts to a closer examination of how Islamic language is cloaking a political and military insurgency. On the other hand, however, the voices of a few, probably western-leaning or government influenced editorial writers represents the views of -- at best -- the region's middle and upper classes. The real problem lies in the hearts of the poor, the bored and the willing that roam the streets of Amman, Cairo, Damascus and Kabul, looking for a reason to live. Are they questioning Islam? Is their society willing to say strongly that Islam has no place in political or public life? The answer is that there is no answer to this problem for Middle Eastern governments. To oppose this insurgency on the grounds of some separation of religion and politics is bound to fail because Islam expressly inserts itself into political life. To not say anything against the militants is to give them de facto carte blanche to continue to act in the name of Islam.

It may be that the only real solution is a war for Islam from within Islam. May the Lebanese win (see picture).

Just look at how strongly feelings about righteousness have split the US over the issue of abortion. Now multiple that feeling by 1000 and raise it to the power of the 100 Years War in Europe. That's about the order of magnitude that any war across the Mulsim world for the soul of Islam would have to be to declare a true winner, with no remnant dregs scurrying about, waiting for the next round of fighting.

Their struggle (within Islam) ought not be seen as something alien to us. We wrestle with religion regularly in the courts and our own lives -- and this after more than one hundred years of historical critical method in scholarship have slowly eroded the previously sacrosant status of the written documents that form the evidentiary basis for our belief. How long will it take in the Muslim world without a historical critical method of Quranic analysis?