Who Speaks for Islam?

VIEW: Who speaks for Islam? — Farish A Noor
Daily Times, September 9, 2006

Who speaks for Islam? For several years now the question that has occupied the minds of the great and the learned. Numerous conferences and international seminars have been organised around the topic, and many a talking head has pontificated at length about the theme and the related questions.

In a sense everything and everyone speaks for Islam: The Quran and Hadith speak for Islam; Muslim civilisation and history speak for Islam; the conduct and misconduct of Muslim politics, economics and society all speak for Islam. And Muslims themselves speak of, on, about, for and against Islam.

Perhaps the question can and should be reversed and posed thus: if everyone and everything speaks for Islam, then who is listened to? Whose voice is dominant, has relevance and currency, is believed, obeyed and taken seriously? In other words, in the Babelian chorus that goes in all directions and in the midst of this confounding cacophony that is discourse on and about Islam, whose voice stands out and who is taken seriously? That, is the real question.

In answering the question we can eliminate the obvious fall guys and hopeless cases: the so-called ‘moderate’ voices of Islam that talk about the beauty of pluralism and diversity within and without the Muslim community have long since been discredited. So have the timid voices of the so-called ‘liberal’ Muslim leaders who preach the gospel of justice but fail to demonstrate their commitment to it in the governance of their own nations and their wilful support for American and Israeli hegemony and violence. Then there are the middling crowd of passive observers whose commentary on Islam is as superficial as their understanding of it, often couched in terms of a homespun conservatism that lacks bite and ideological commitment.

No, the fact is that today the only voice of Islam that is consistent, coherent and listened to is the voice of the subaltern radical whose message is as clear as it is simple and uncompromising. This was driven home to me recently after an interview with the infamous cleric Ustaz Abu Bakar Bashir, who was accused of masterminding the Bali bombings in Indonesia in 2002. Bashir’s tone and tenor were expected and predictable: uncompromising, uncluttered by politically-correct nuances and asides. In fact it was the predictability of his speech and sermonising that made the interview both terrifying and easy; proof, if any was needed still, of the effectiveness of a discourse that is consistent.

Men like Abu Bakar Bashir have been saying the same things since the 1980s, but today their voices have resonance and they are taken more seriously than ever before. Why? Partly because of the absence of coherent and committed leadership in the Muslim world; where most, if not all, Muslim leaders can be bought with a fat cheque from the Department of Overseas Aid from a rich first-world country. Partly because the liberal, moderate urban and urbane elite of the Muslim world are so distanced from their own people that many of them do not even speak the vernacular tongue of the man in the street and the masses in the slums. Partly because it has become a taboo for ‘moderate’ Muslims to condemn the criminal injustices of Israel, for fear of being labelled ‘anti-Semitic’, despite the fact that the Israeli fascist war machine has shown no signs of tiring down or relenting in its dreams of territorial expansion.

Faced with such a gallery of grey, faceless and forgettable duds and lame ducks, is it any wonder if the ordinary Muslim - a citizen of the rapidly marginalising Third World - feels that there is no-one to speak of his pain and anger, save the Bashirs and Osamas of the world? No, we will have to face the fact that with the passing of three decades since the 1970s the centre of global Muslim opinion has shifted significantly to the right; and that Muslims worldwide now feel a greater sense of solidarity and collective victimisation than ever before. The catalogue of outrages and insults drags on and on: Gulf Wars I and II, the invasion of Afghanistan, regime change in Iraq, the demonisation of Iran, the threat of violence against Syria, the destruction of Lebanon. Who among us has been the most articulate and consistent defender of Muslim interest in the midst of this, if not the angry ulema and Islamists?

Who speaks for Islam, is the most important and relevant question that faces us today. In answering the question we need to recognise that the middle ground of consensus and understanding has shifted to a different register altogether. Accounting for the growing popularity of the so-called ‘mad Mullahs’ who spit fire and venom at the evil West, we need to ask ourselves what have the moderate voices been doing all this time? Were they even interested in rescuing the one vital factor that today figures so prominently in the concern of Muslims - pride and self-worth? Or have they, in the midst of their partying and self-gratification, forgotten the primary constituencies they are supposed to represent, and by doing so lost the middle ground to the angry voices from the pulpit?

Dr Farish A Noor is a political scientist based at the Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin