Mind, Body, Soul

Yasir Qadhi shares a piece on Muslimmatters entitled “The Lure of Radicalism and Extremism Amongst Muslim Youth“. In it Qadhi exposes more details on his relationship with a would-be suicide/underwear bomber, “Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab”. Qadhi comes clean in recognizing that Al Maghrib Institute failed to pull Umar Farouk out of the path which led him to try to blow up his underwear and a plane along with it. No-doubt, so called ‘sufi’ institutes also failed Umar Farouk, but it was Al Maghrib which he attended.

Now he is addressing the question: why?

Qadhi breaks down the problem of radicalism into two factors:

External Factors:
Bad Political action by Western countries (Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Patriot Act)
Abuses by Western powers (Abu Ghraib, Secret Prisons, Drone attacks, collatoral damage)
Western Media Islamophobia
“Sell-out” talk by Muslim Imams condemning Muslim violence but not Non-Muslim violence

Internal Factors:
Use of cherry-picked excerpts from Quran and Hadith
Simplistic black and white understanding about truth
Lack of wisdom, nuanced readings, and too much testosterone
Misreading of Islamic history as idealistic, less human

Here are some obvious inconsistencies and problems with Qadhi’s paradigm:

• 1) Qadhi attempts to address scholarly authority and education as a solution:
  

  With regards to the internal factors, it is not likely that a mind well-grounded in authentic texts and traditions will gravitate towards acts of terrorism. Thus, it is no coincidence that one will be hard-pressed to find senior clerics, of any theological persuasion, who justify flying planes into building or strapping bombs onto one’s body in order to blow up innocent civilians.

  However, ‘senior clerics’, when it comes to modern Muslim leaders, is a made up term. In a ‘history is written by the victors’ turn, Anwar Awlaki is written out as a nut job. However, Muslimmatters.org and many other Muslim bloggers celebrated Anwar Awlaki’s release from prison a few years ago.

  Today, Qadhi describes Anwar Awlaki as “an American-born cleric whose vision of Islam was completely at odds with our own”.

  What isn’t mentioned is that although today Awlaki’s vision is now at odds with Qadhi, every one of the teachers and leaders of that Institute has at some point in their lives admired Awlaki’s character, scholarship and participated in events where his tapes were sold. There is no doubt, if he was available, he would have been a sought-after speaker and teacher at these conferences a few years ago. In fact, he was sought after. That is just being honest.

  Muhammad alShareef:
  I totally agree. I have already spoken to him at the JIMAS conference. He wouldn’t be doing the class in the UsA though. He would be conducting the class in maybe Canada or the UK. So, we have to establish our presence in those countries first and pave the way for awesome teachers like him.

  BTW: I have been offered the chance to teach Seerah ‘on location’! Meaning, we would teach the history at the places that it occured: Badr, Khaybar, Ta’if, the moutain of light, the thowr cave, etc.

  I did Istikhaarah,and I felt that there were more qualified teachers to teach Seerah. So, my heart is focused on getting Shaykh Anwar to do this!  – image link

  So, who and what mainstream Muslims decide to considered ‘authoritative’ seems to be in flux.

  Even having this ‘authority’ stripped from him today, one person’s authoritative scholar is not the next person’s authoritative scholar so the point is moot. Case in point: ‘Senior clerics’ in Hamas justify plenty of things, including suicide bombings.

• 2) Qadhi’s perspective is based on using various means to tie the youth to an understanding of Islam which will lead to a successful worldly life. Qadhi is not addressing the reality that the youth choosing this path are looking for meaning beyond the worldly life. In this case it is the desired lifestyle which is the goal that Qadhi has defined, and he is using Islam, society, laws, whatever it takes to justify it. This is the very definition of sell-out for the radical prone.
  

  (and for the record, I firmly believe that one of the best ways to de-radicalize these young men is to help them get married early and encourage them to have kids, and I mean this in all seriousness).

  This approach sounds like the appeal of dunya will deter these folks. It doesn’t seem to work, Faisal Shahzad was a married father of two kids. These people are sacrificing their luxuries for their cause and Qadhi is attempting to justify why they shouldn’t.

• 3) Academic excellence offered by al-Maghrib wasn’t sufficient, and Qadhi states:
  

  I have no doubt that Umar AbdulMutallab saw a level of academic excellence at AlMaghrib that he would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in the Western world. I also have no doubt that he was highly impressed with the scholastic content of our seminars. However, in the end, what was important to him was not what he saw, but what he didn’t see. And what he didn’t see was an exposition and condemnation of the role our own countries play in spreading terror around the world. What he didn’t see were explicit solutions being offered in light of the current situation of the Ummah.

  If the institute complained more about the problems of the Western countries, Umar would have done something differently? I don’t think so. Academic excellence isn’t what these people are after, nor are academic rebuttals or complains. Most people, and most Muslims, don’t exist in an intellectual bubble of debates and proofs and Ivy league universities.

  An academic response has never motivated nor prevented any real military effort. It doesn’t really motivate soldiers. And it doesn’t rebut radicals, because it doesn’t effect anyone. The truth of the matter is philosophies don’t change the world. Even if you offer an exposition and condemnation of the role our countries play, in what way does that prevent radical action? All it does is make you go from appearing as rationalizing/ignoring to seeming ineffectual.

• 4) Yasir Qadhi points to vocalizing our grievances against the external factors as a means to dissuade acts of desperation:
  

  If we truly wish to fight radical ideas amongst our youth – if we wish to persuade them away from rash measures drawn from raw emotions, and to persuade them to act upon wisdom and perform real acts of courage – then the first step that we will have to take is to become more vocal about the grievances that drive young men to acts of desperation. We will need to be frank about the role that our governments play in ruining the freedoms and happiness that specific societies around the world deserve. And after discussing these woes, we will need to educate our youth about the proper way forward in solving them: away from foolish and un-Islamic militancy, and towards education, political activism and other positive channels.

  Is there a fundamental Islamic reason why discussion followed up with education and political activism will address the ‘external’ or ‘internal’ factors Qadhi discusses? If those discussions lead to attempts to change policy, then we end up with Hizb Tahirir and Muslim Brotherhood type political organizations, both organizations which Qadhi remains unaffiliated with. Looking forward, this approach would create yet another political Islamic ‘perspective’, it’s been done before.

• 5) While Qadhi talks about being labeled as sell-outs, he writes:
  

  We need to protect our religion for our children after us, and we need to preserve what we can of the freedoms this country still offers us.

  Why are these freedoms of such tantamount importance? The fundamental problem is that Qadhi is grasping after securing the status quo and ‘radicals’ are not.

  Qadhi is not able to transcend the philosophical high chair of an academic to understand how these youth think, and in-so-doing, he falls into the same rhetoric which distances them in the first place.

Rescue of Chile Miners

Mawlana Shaykh Muhammad Nazim Al-Haqqani felt a lot of concern and compassion for the 33 miners who were trapped underground in Chile. He prayed on their behalf, for their safety and well-being, and he asked the Ahl an-Nawba (spiritual guardians) in Chile to look after them and make their rescue easy. He instructed the 33 workers to repeat as much as possible – “there is no god but The God”. When the news came that their rescue was very risky, he donated a big sum of money (Nadhr)to be distributed in charity in 3 very poor countries in order to eliminate anything that might stand in the way of their safe rescue. Finally when all the miners were safely rescued, he prayed Shukr prayer and gave out charity (Sadaqa) in thankfullness to God Almighty.

For the honor of the Lord of heavens, Shaykh Muhammad Nazim Al Haqqani is sending to the poor people that have suffered from the calamaty in Chile 20,000 euros as a present wishing them to be happy here and hereafter and protected by heavenly blessings. Saying that it is a very small gift, Mawlana is asking forgiveness from the Lord of heavens here and hereafter.

Time Square Bomber: Theological Confusion & Hypocrisy in Action

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yursil-kidwai/time-square-bomber-theolo_b_752582.html