Condemning Terrorism Is Just a First Step for Muslim States

By Haleh Esfandiari

Wall Street Journal

January 13, 2015

Last week Islamic extremists murdered 12 staff members of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and, in separate incidents, killed three police officers and four hostages in a Jewish market in Paris. One wonders how much further people might go to besmirch the religion in whose name they say they act. The brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi killed because of cartoons they believed mocked the Prophet Muhammad; but the prophet of Islam does not need two terrorists to defend him or take revenge in his name.

Why don’t extremists who kill in the name of Islam learn more about their true religion? Why don’t their leaders and the imams who train, indoctrinate, and send them to kill innocent men, women and children, or people of other faiths or even other sects of Islam, instead teach them respect and tolerance for their own and other religions, other cultures and civilizations? Instead of sending fanatics to demolish and destroy—be it the magnificent statues of the Bhuddha in Bamyan, Afghanistan, or the artifacts of museums in Iraq–why do they not teach them to build: schools, clinics, towns, or how to again fashion the beautiful objects Islam has created over the centuries?

The killers of Paris were born and raised in the West. They had the same schooling as their French compatriots, but they felt alienated. They were not at ease in French society. They came to hate free speech as much as they did women showing bare skin. Under the influence of fanatics who claim to speak for Islam, a transition apparently took place. Media outlets have broadcast or published two images of Hayat Boumeddiene, the wife of gunman Amedy Coulibaly, that underscore the transition: One shows her in a bikini in Mr. Coulibaly’s arms reportedly before they married. The other shows her fully veiled, gun in hand.

These men and women might have taken what they learned in the West back to the societies from which they or their parents came and worked for change and progress in an environment where they felt more comfortable. Instead, they fell prey to religious instructors who taught them to become killers rather than creators. For years, too many governments in Muslim countries and too many leading clerics at the great teaching centers of Islam have remained silent in the face of such destructive developments.

This time, however, every Arab and Muslim government has condemned the Paris killings as terrorism and has distanced itself from those who perpetrated these acts in the name of Islam. This is a beginning, but condemning terrorism is not enough. Reform is necessary across the board in Islamic instruction; the great centers of Islamic learning must ask themselves why so many clerics become preachers of hate and violence. Autocratic Islamic states have an occasion for a thorough soul-searching. They need to treat their people as citizens, not subjugate them. They need to honor in practice the principles of freedom of speech and press, to make room for a variety of schools of political thought and develop respect for the rule of law. Addressing Islamic extremism must begin in the seminaries and governments of Islamic states.

Haleh Esfandiari directs the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She was held in solitary confinement in Evin Prison in Tehran for 105 days in 2007. The views expressed here are her own.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/01/13/condemning-terrorism-is-just-a-first-step-for-muslim-states/

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