My most treasured childhood memories are colored by beauty
associated with what Islam was in the society that I was born in and raised.
One vivid memory
of this childhood involves regularly sitting on the edge of my father's prayer
mat, made from goat-skin that became supple over years of usage in nomadic
hamlets in central Somalia.
I can still feel
the texture and smell of the hide, though my father passed on over 30 years
ago. My father and his three brothers were Koranic teachers in central Somalia,
traveling from hamlet to hamlet, teaching children, mostly boys, to memorize
the Koran, and often returning with goats that were given them as payment for their
labor. In addition to teaching, which carried great prestige for both teachers
and disciples, these men of religion performed marriages, tended to the sick
and performed burial rituals.
The Islam that shaped my childhood also included my mother who
could neither read nor write Arabic, who memorized few verses of the Koran, and
whose daily life was consumed with the financial and emotional needs of her
family. My mother's work in a meat market in central Somalia required extremely
long hours, with prayer rituals a luxury that she and many of her female
co-workers could never afford. But this lack of "practice" was devoid
of shame, nor was there any articulated distinction between a Muslim and a
practicing Muslim.
Life in Somalia,
until my teens in the 1980s, defied this dichotomy, with Muslim identity being
part and parcel of being a Somali, regardless of adherence to any particular
ritual.
Evolving nightmare
Over two decades later, I feel fortunate
to be able to hang on to those memories, but saddened that my American-born
children will come of age with an Islam that is tangled with terrorism.
Until very
recently, I jolted every time I heard the word "Islamic" and
"terrorism" lumped so intimately. While new extremist discourses
gained prominence following the 9/11 attacks against the United States and the
disastrous American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, this discourse now
overshadows the Islam of my childhood.
An evolving nightmare for the world in general and Muslims in
particular, from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to Al Shabaab in
Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the newest extremist group of the Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now dictate our lens towards Muslims and Islam.
Muslims are the
primary victims of these groups' wrath, all of us numb spectators of the daily
slaughtering of innocent civilians. Just over the last three weeks, we saw Boko
Haram's massacre of over 50 people in Nigeria, ISIS' beheading of Khaled al-Asaad, an
82-year-old Syrian scholar, the bombing of hotels by Al Shabaab in Mogadishu with dozens of victims, as well as
bombing of busses, an airport and other public sites by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Alien dogma
Though the groups executing these
atrocities represent an extreme in their readings of Islam, a less brutal but
still potent literal interpretation of Islam is also spreading around the
world. This trend translates to the demise of varying contextualized flavors of
a dynamic Islam that accommodated differences in culture and history.
Islam as an
organic text that adapted to the socio-economic and environmental needs of
particular peoples (Somali nomadic women's earlier dress choices adapted for
the need to work, build huts, load camels with newborn goats, children, the
elderly, for example) is now replaced by prescriptive Islamic interpretation
that is policed by individuals and at times militant groups.
The non-dogmatic
reading of Islam that I grew up with, religion as an identifier of who people
are and not what they do per se, is now under assault (i.e. the
destruction of Sufi and Shia shrines with the intention to erase centuries of
social, cultural and historical worldviews).
Islam in the
majority of the Muslim world, through new technologies and charity with
petrodollars, is increasingly defined in rigid terms. The yardstick used by Al
Qaeda, ISIS, Al Shabaab and Boko Haram, not only towards women but also towards
religious minorities, politics and history is informed by an uncompromising
dogma that is alien to most of us who were born in Muslim-majority societies.
Reclaiming Islam
My sense of whirling like a dervish in
making sense of the schizophrenic identity crisis of Muslims everywhere at this
beginning of the 21st century is due to the current condition of the Muslim
world.
Saying that a
dismal number of Muslims engage in terrorism does little to change the enduring
damage inflicted on Islam and Muslims everywhere. This brutal minority has
become the de facto defining feature of the Islamic world, not only driving
European and American political and military interventions in the Muslim world,
but also anchoring the rhetoric of dictatorial leaders in all Muslim-majority
countries. The fight against "Islamic" movements is not only on the
agenda on America's War on Terror, but that of Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia,
Tunisia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
My fear and the
fear of many Muslims around the world is that Islam's standing is severely
damaged and the Islam of our childhood might as well belong to another era.
Confusion, shame and victimhood might define the future memories of Muslim
children, with the binary of "Islamist militants" and "moderate Muslims"
permanently tainting both groups for generations to come.
It will require
a revolutionary Muslim introspection to reclaim Islam for future generations.
Such introspection would not only reject and mobilize against extremists'
fossilized and doomed version of Islam but also against Western-backed brutal
dictatorial regimes in the Islamic world that use the war on terror to
terrorize their own citizens as well as Western neo-imperial policies and
projects.
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