Linda S. Heard, Special to Arab News

CAIRO, 27 January 2004 — As I was browsing through a Jan. 25 Sky News report related to the annual Haj pilgrimage, I stopped short at this sentence: “Paradoxically, after Sept. 11th, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the US”. Paradoxically? What’s “paradoxical” about it and what does Sept. 11 have to do with Muslims and/or Islam?

A paradox is something, which is contrary to expectation, seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense. The Sky News’ statement “Islam is the fastest growing religion in the US” would only qualify as being “paradoxical” in relation to the attacks on America in the event that Islam or a substantial percentage of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims were responsible for those crimes. If that had been the case, the fact that Islam is flourishing in the very country, which came under attack, would be curious if not astonishing, and, certainly “paradoxical”.

The fact that 19 young men, nominally Muslims or purporting to be so, took umbrage at US foreign policy and brought down that country’s symbols of power has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam and has been condemned by the vast majority of Muslims as well as their religious leaders and heads of state.

Indeed, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were vigorously denounced by Islamic clerics, including the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh, who called them “a form of injustice that cannot be tolerated by Islam...”

His words were echoed by Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Al-Tantawi of Al Azhar, who said “Attacking innocent people is not courageous; it is stupid and will be punished on the Day of Judgment”.

In the same way that Jews were horribly persecuted down the centuries by the ignorant and the bigoted as being Christ killers, it appears a similar type of ignoramus has emerged with regard to Muslims and Sept.11. The intellectually challenged, the apathetic and the gung-ho are being slowly indoctrinated to formulate such a linkage in their own minds. Let’s face it. Without this fabricated slur on Muslims, the Bush administration’s surges into Afghanistan and Iraq would have come up against massive public opposition.

As financier George Soros wrote: “The terrorist attack on the United States could have been treated as a crime against humanity rather than an act of war. Treating it as a crime would have been more appropriate. Crimes require police work, not military action. Imagine for a moment that Sept. 11 had been treated as a crime. We would not have invaded Iraq...”

He omitted to say that tens of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis, mostly Muslims, would not have lost their lives, limbs and livelihoods either. But if Sept. 11 had been treated as a crime, the US military footprint would have been curtailed, Syria and Iran would not be under threat and the West might have had a lot more sympathy for the thousands of Palestinians killed, maimed, imprisoned and rendered homeless in the last few years. Do we dare say by Jews? No, we do not and should not. Israel, the state, is responsible for Palestinian suffering, not Jews. In the same way criminals were responsible for Sept. 11, not Muslims.

If we insist on using this flawed logic to link Islam with Sept.11, we surely then have to put Christianity as the driving force behind the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, since the premiers of both the US and Britain happen to be committed Christians. Going with this line of thinking, we must forget that the Vatican opposed the Iraq war and millions of Christians flooded Western streets in an attempt to prevent the bloodshed in the same way that so many in the West conveniently ignore the condemnations of Sept. 11 made by Muslims and their religious leaders.

We do not use the terms “Christian invaders” or “Jewish occupiers”, so why should the Western media feel comfortable with “Muslim terrorists”?

In reality there are questions needing answers concerning some of the 19. According to an article in The Daily Telegraph (Sept. 14, 2001), Mohammed Atta and the Al-Shehhi brothers spent their last evening on earth in a bar and were described by Tony Amos, the manager of Shuckums Oyster Bar and Restaurant, as hard drinkers. Hardly the behavior of religious extremists! The same goes for the Lebanese hijacker Ziad Jarrah, who cohabited with a Turkish woman in Germany and was seen in a home video, flashed across our screens post Sept. 11, dancing and drinking at a family wedding. There is nothing Islamic about the behavior of these men, fundamentalist or otherwise.

So I would say to Sky News there is little paradoxical about the growth of Islam in the US. For many Islam provides a structured way of life and a sense of belonging amid a consumerist society, which has experienced a weakening of family ties and values. Islam has become the religion of choice for minority groups, especially African Americans. Islam is a religion, which knows no color and where paupers and princes are indistinguishable as they worship side by side.

“Islam” which derives from the Arabic word for “peace” and means “submission” is being deliberately misrepresented to further violent agendas whether on the part of people calling themselves “Muslims” or by the Will to Power ambitions of some Western governments. This is the real paradox here and it’s about time it was exposed for all to see.

— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs and can be contacted at heardonthegrapevine@yahoo.co.uk