Mona Siddiqui: On Religious Freedom and Religious Extremism

What 9/11 managed to do was convince many onlookers that religious expression could quite easily be equated with religious fanaticism. In the case of Islam, Muslim fanaticism was an anti western expression, more precisely an anti-American force, which even if practiced by a few, would win the day if American military might did not take steps to curb what they perceived as a real and global threat. The October 15th edition of Newsweek, captured this concern vividly in its cover: `Why they hate us – the roots of Islamic rage and what we can do about it.’[1] The `they’ refers specifically to Osama Bin Laden and his circle but warns also of million of Muslims who admire his anti-American ideology, even if they do not agree with his terrorist methods. The `us’ is the West, with America lying at the heart of this cultural entity. A sharp distinction between the two worlds is not intended but the article draws attention to a general discourse which pits the Muslim world against the West. Though the usefulness and relevance of such phrases such as the `clash of civilisations’ or `Islam and the West’ all of which fundamentally express a false bipolarity between Muslims and Westerners should be strongly contested, these concepts have again been revived because of the 9/11 attacks and continue to lie at the basis of so much discussion on faith, politics and society. As Robert Hefner writes, in one swoop, al-Qaeda and its affiliates, middle-class and well-educated, in their collaboration with the Taliban, parochials who had emerged from one of the most regressive states in the Muslim world, had given radical Islam a new image and local extremists a disproportionate influence.[2]

Ten years on, our conversations about Islam are as not so much about militant extremism but extremism of a different nature. Against the background of the war on terror, the focus is increasingly on values. Do Muslims share the values of liberal western democracies where religious pluralism is promoted as a social and ethical virtue, the evolutionary product of good democracies, not fundamentally as a theological imperative. Have Muslims bought the software of liberal democracies where human rights and freedoms are respected despite social and political diversity? I wonder whether my parent’s generation could have envisaged 40 years after arriving in this country, after becoming British citizens, living full lives in their communities, that their children would be embroiled in this new struggle? For today’s struggle is not about economic aspirations, it’s about competing ideologies and values. Today’s conflicts so often collapse religious faith into religious extremism and violence in order to lure the young.

We have yet to see the use of `religious language’ in the aftermath of the Arab Spring but in all the emphasis on freedoms, will freedom of thought and expression be able to accommodate freedom of religion in its true sense? Once new governments have taken power, what values will they uphold especially when it affects the lives of minority religious groups? This is why it is important that freedom of religion is not simply seen as a universal human value, but that human conscience is given its full theological and political recognition. Even if the state upholds this value, even if religious freedom is recognised as a universal right, how can we ensure that it is accepted fully in the hearts and minds of those fighting for change? When it comes to freedom, we all like to think we are universalists; we want freedom for ourselves and for others. Yet when it comes to religious freedom for all, many of us will be challenged by our own prejudices, our own faiths and even our own governments.

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[1] Newsweek front cover with an article by Fareed Zakaria titled, `The Politics of Rage,’ October 15th 2001

[2] Robert Hefner, conference on `Muslim Politics and US Policies: Prospects for Pluralism and Democracy in the Muslim World,’ September 17 2003.p.9 at pewforum.org/events/0917/introduction.pdf