Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now Read Free Page A

Islam, we must understand what it is and recognize certain distinctions within the Muslim world. The distinctions I have in mind are not the conventional ones among Sunni, Shia, and other branches of the faith. Rather, they are broad sociological groupings defined by the nature of their observance. I will subdivide Muslims. I will not subdivide Islam.
    Islam is a single core creed based on the Qur’an, the words revealed by the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad, and the hadith, the accompanying works that detail Muhammad’s life and words. Despite some sectarian differences, this creed unites all Muslims. All, without exception, know by heart these words: “I bear witness that there is no God but Allah; and Muhammad is His messenger.” This is the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith.
    The Shahada may seem a declaration of belief no different from any other to Westerners used to individual freedom of conscience and religion. But the reality is that the Shahada is both a religious and a political symbol.
    In the early days of Islam, when Muhammad was going from door to door trying to persuade the polytheists to abandon their idols of worship, he was inviting them to accept that there was no god but Allah and that he was Allah’s messenger, much as Christ had asked the Jews to accept that he was the son of God. However, after ten years of trying this kind of persuasion, Muhammad and his small band of believers went to Medina and from that moment Muhammad’s mission took on a political dimension. Unbelievers were still invited to submit to Allah, but, after Medina, they were attacked if they refused. If defeated, they were given the option either to convert or to die. (Jews and Christians could retain their faith if they submitted to paying a special tax.)
    No symbol represents the soul of Islam more than the Shahada. But today there is a contest within Islam for the ownership of that symbol. Who owns the Shahada? Is it those Muslims who want to emphasize Muhammad’s years in Mecca, or those who are inspired by his conquests after Medina? There are millions upon millions of Muslims who identify themselves with the former. Increasingly, however, they are challenged by fellow believers who want to revive and reenact the political version of Islam born in Medina—the version that took Muhammad from being a wanderer in the desert to a symbol of absolute morality.
    On this basis, I believe we can distinguish three different groups of Muslims.
    The first group is the most problematic. These are the fundamentalists who, when they say the Shahada, mean: “We must live by the strict letter of our creed.” They envision a regime based on sharia, Islamic religious law. They argue for an Islam largely or completely unchanged from its original seventh-century version. What is more, they take it as a requirement of their faith that they impose it on everyone else.
    I was tempted to call this group “Millenarian Muslims,” because their fanaticism is reminiscent of the various fundamentalist sects that flourished in medieval Christendom prior to the Reformation, most of which combined fanaticism and violence with anticipation of the end of the world. 7 But the analogy is imperfect. Whereas Shiite doctrine looks forward to the return of the Twelfth Imam and the global triumph of Islam, Sunni zealots are more likely to aspire to the forcible creation of a new caliphate here on earth. Instead, then, I shall call them Medina Muslims, in that they see the forcible imposition of sharia as their religious duty. They aim not just to obey Muhammad’s teaching, but also to emulate his warlike conduct after his move to Medina. Even if they do not themselves engage in violence, they do not hesitate to condone it.
    It is Medina Muslims who call Jews and Christians “pigs and monkeys” and preach that both faiths are, in the words of the Council on Foreign Relations Fellow (and former Islamist) Ed Husain, “false religions.” It is