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Multifarious faces of Islam

Bhuwan Thapaliya - 3/10/2011

During the Cold War, people in the West asked two questions about communism. Was it reformable? And could we live with it? Without equating Islam and Communism, the West should perhaps be asking the same question about radical Islam.

One answer might be that, though detente with communism was hard and occasionally painful, the altercation with radical Islam could be much worse.

To many people in the West, Islam is all one phenomenon: intolerant, alien, hazardous and baffling. Some of the recurrent headlines -- Taliban extremists banish women behind the veil in northern Afghanistan, Islamic extremists slaughter villagers in Algeria, al Qaeda planning further terror attacks -- will confirm such people in their views.

Yet a wider reading of the news bears out what should be a commonplace: Islam has many faces.

The unacceptable face of Islam certainly exists. In some Muslim nations, Muslims are obliged to pray five times a day, women are beaten for not covering up, thieves have their hands chopped off in public and adulterers are stoned to death. But in more general terms, all religion produces extremists. Doesn’t they?

Hindu zealots do terrible things in India; Christians commit atrocities in Northern Ireland. But when it comes to extremists, why does the world thinks that only Islam produces extremists and that all extremists are Islamists?

This illusion of the West coupled with negative connotations from Islam has always been the source of conflict and unless addressed properly will continue to be so.

Perhaps what makes Islamic extremists more prominent is this: Islamic extremists tend to thrive in places where conventional politicians have failed, heroes are few and hope has vanished. That may be in Algeria or Afghanistan; it may be in Turkey, or France or even Indonesia.

Meanwhile, analysts say, one way the world is nourishing Islamic extremism is by stamping this epithet even on the harmless expression of Islamist ideas by hook or by crook, and by excluding Muslims from the larger society in which they live. That is what has been happening to the many unemployed Muslims youth who live on the outskirts of French cities.

Nonetheless, radical Islam, epitomized by Iran and Sudan, is now showing signs of exhaustion. The attempts by these two regimes have not had much success. There has been no "domino effect" in the Muslim world.

Iran and Sudan have both caused trouble, certainly, and are likely to go on doing so. But no regime has fallen as a result of their efforts. Many Islamists have stopped seeing them, if they ever did, as models to be emulated. Instead they are more likely to learn from their mistakes than their achievements.

Despite these unpromising contexts, the merits of coming to terms with radical Islam are being cautiously debated. Should the movements which act in Islam's name be kept out of power at all costs, or be given the chance to promote their causes by non-violent means? Or should the West respond with horror to radical Islam gaining toe- hold and applaud the historic compromise that has been achieved by a resilient democracy?