Storm Track Disinformation: Who Speaks for Islam?

From The Gathering Storm

UNC-Chapel Hill sociologist, Charles Kurzman, wrote back in 2001

“If you want the Catholic position on terrorism, ask the Vatican. If you want the Southern Baptist position, refer to the Executive Committee and the resolutions of the annual convention. There may be dissent, as in all faiths. But these offices have the authority to speak on behalf of their religion. Islam has no organized church to speak with such authority. As the world confronts terrorism, no single Muslim or Islamic organization can tell us definitively what Islam says on the subject.”

This is not only a problem for Muslims – who hear a plethora of competing preachings and fatwas - but this confusion of multiple voices aids the Islamists in their strategy of disinformation that causes confusion for non-Muslims as to what Islam is really about and its stand on the war against Islamic terrorism.

The confusion leads – intentionally or unintentionally – to a division of opinion, even strategies and tactics, on how to confront Islamo-terrorism. Let’s face it, 99% of all terrorist acts are done in the name of Islam whether Muslims like or not. This confusion of who speaks for Islam and what Islam is suppose to be in practice, leads to silly debates of which Muslim, muftis, imans, clerics and self proclaimed street preachers should be tolerated in a free society and which should not.

Case in point.

A controversial Muslim cleric from Britain due to speak in Toronto this weekend has told CBC he does not promote hatred. Sheik Abu Yousef Riyadh ul-Haq, scheduled to speak at the Youth Tarbiyah Conference in Scarborough, has drawn fire for sermons his critics allege incite hatred of Jews, Hindus, gays and moderate Muslims.

His response to critics? “"All I would like to say is that the picture portrayed from these quotes that I preach hatred against the Jews, the Christians or the Hindus is totally false," he told CBC.” But then he added this. In an interview broadcast Friday on the CBC Radio program The Current, ul-Haq insists his words have been taken out of context and that he was actually condemning extremists of every religious persuasion who misinterpret their holy books to justify terrorism.

Whao! Hold your horses! Is he saying that terrorism is preached in the Bible, Koran and in the texts of Asian religions? The arrogance of the man! But a perfect example of the loose cannons that are rolling around the sinking ship of Islam.

So what to do about these loose cannons that sow confusion and discord in the non-Muslim world? Let’s get back to Kurzmann.

“In 1924 -- 80 years ago, according to the lunar Islamic calendar -- the newly founded Republic of Turkey abolished the Ottoman caliphate. The Ottoman caliph claimed to be the sole successor to the Messenger Muhammad as religious leader of the Muslims -- caliph, or "khalifa," means "successor" in Arabic. Muslims did not universally accept the caliph's judgment, but the office of the caliphate provided the Islamic world with a symbol of unified leadership. This symbol disappeared in the competing claims to succession, all ultimately dropped, that followed the abolition of the caliphate. Today each Islamic country has a separate religious hierarchy, or even multiple hierarchies, and none is bound to acknowledge the leadership of any other. Mullah Muhammad Omar, until very recently the leading religious official in Afghanistan, competed for Islamic authority with Shaykh Tantawi of Egypt, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran and other leading scholars."

In my opinion, the non-Muslim world should hope for even encourage the return of the Caliph that way Islam has a face and though Muslims may not, in the words of Kurzmann, “universally accept the caliph's judgment, … the office of the caliphate [would] provide the Islamic world with a symbol of unified leadership.”

Once that is done, the non-Muslim world could point to that unified symbol of leadership and the words it emanates to dispel the confusion Islam and take away on softening-up tactic of the Islamists – disinformation.