ARTICLES

Marian Muslim

LOCAL ISLAMIC SCHOLAR DISCUSSES CATHOLIC-MUSLIM TIES

By Stephen Schwartz

Islamic extremism and Muslim terrorists have become major symbols of evil for the media and public in the West. Yet when the United Nations held its Cairo Conference on Population in 1994, a curious development occurred: Muslim religious leaders at the conference came out against its proposed document--written with official U.S. backing--on "Reproductive Rights, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Family Planning."

Who was blamed for this stand by Islamic clerics? Pope John Paul II.

The Muslims, like the Vatican, condemned proposals that young people be educated in "sexual hygiene," with parents excluded from approval or decision-making. They objected strenuously to neutral references to "marriage and other unions" and to "sexually active unmarried individuals."

Secularist journalists were quick to detect an ecumenical conspiracy. Vatican diplomats had stirred the Iranian and Moroccan delegations to organize Muslim opposition to the draft document even before the conference met, according to major newspapers.

Public philosopher Anna Quindlen of the New York Times wrote, "The Vatican has engineered shameful alliances for the Cairo conference, sending emissaries to both Libya and Iran in its pursuit of at-any-and-all-costs opposition to legal abortion." What Quindlen and other antireligious writers found upsetting, Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a leader of Islam in America and resident of the Bay Area peninsula, found unsurprising. To him, the coalition was a natural one.

In a recent interview with the Faith, Kabbani, chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America and spiritual director of the Masjid Al-Tawheed in Mountain View, declared, "As mainstream Muslims we reach out to Christian and Jewish believers who defend their traditions and who stand on the law of Allah. And the Allah we worship is the same God as Christian and Jewish believers worship."

Shaykh Kabbani is indeed the real thing. Born in Lebanon, he typically appears dressed in the flowing robes and tall turban of a traditional Islamic scholar. He received a degree in Islamic jurisprudence in Damascus, to complement his degrees in chemistry from the American University in Beirut, and medical study at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

"In many ways, Catholics are closest to us, among the Christians," Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani, Shaykh Hisham's teacher, recently commented. Shaykh Nazim has pointed to the Muslim devotion to Mary, mother of Jesus, as one of the greatest woman in history, and to the need for a common defense by Bosnian and Albanian Muslims and Catholics in response to Orthodox Christian aggression from Serbia and the ex-Soviet Union.

Kabbani calls on many sources in Islam's holy book, the Quran, as well as in the traditions of the Prophet, known as Hadith, to support this view.

"There is an entire surah (chapter) of Quran named for Mary," he said. "In it we read God's words, 'We sent her Our spirit,' and further, 'We will grant him (Jesus) as a sign for mankind and a mercy from Ourself.' "

But Muslim-Catholic parallels do not end with the veneration of Mary. "The surah 'The Romans' in Quran supports the eastern Roman empire in battle against the Persian army, which was then pagan," Kabbani pointed out. "It shows God's gifts of strength and honor go to those fighting for Him, against the idol-worshippers."

In addition, Kabbani points out that traditional mainstream Islam, like Catholicism, accepts the veneration of saints, including the mystics Rumi, Hafiz, and al-Ghazali. Rumi and al-Ghazali were extremely important in the development of the Spanish Catholic intellect because of their influence on the Franciscan philosopher Raimon Llull, the inspirer of Junipero Serra, founder of California.

Kabbani is particularly concerned to change the image of Muslims in the U.S. as hostile to the other monotheistic faiths, to American democracy, and to the West in general.

"We as Muslims do not accept the argument of the extremists, financed by wealthy individuals in Saudi Arabia, who are trying to incite a war between the three religions," he said.

"In the original Islamic state created by the Prophet Muhammad, Christians and Jews were protected and were citizens with full rights. Indeed, the greatest Muslim rulers in history--the Abbasid Arabs in Baghdad, the Arabs in Spain and the Ottoman Turks--strove to protect and assist their Jewish and Christian subjects," he recalled.

Kabbani has taken a firm stand against anti-Western extremism and terrorism. He ascribes the influence of these doctrines among Muslims in America to the domination of many mosques by self-appointed fundamentalist imams without any credentials, many of them poorly-educated in Islam.

In addition, he says, Hamas and other Palestinian radical elements have gained control over the main Islamic lobbying groups in the U.S.

"As Muslims, dealing with the situation in the Middle East we have to be for peace first," he said. "To those who want to continue attacking Israel and the Palestinian Authority, I say, how can you attack now, when the Palestinians finally have a territory on which to put their feet?"

Kabbani recently briefed the U.S. State Department on the threat of terrorism, and plans to establish an Islamic think-tank to analyze, expose, and combat terrorism.

But he is unhappy when he hears terrorism described as "Muslim." "We fight to defend ourselves, our families and our homes, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Chechnya, but we fight in Allah's way: face to face, soldier to soldier. As true Muslims we are forbidden to make war on women and children, on the innocent, civilians, neutrals, and bystanders," he insists.

He expressed concern earlier this year when many American mosques chose to observe the end of Ramadan, in January, by calling for support to Iraq against the U.S. "The whole Iraqi conflict is not an Islamic issue, but a political issue," he said. "The Pope has the right to oppose the U.S. policy on Iraq. But nobody should think that all Muslims are united in defense of Saddam Hussein, who does not follow the Islamic way of rulership. On the contrary, his regime is Baathist--i.e. based on an antireligious, communistic philosophy."

Kabbani is especially moved by the situation in the Balkans and Russia, where Catholics and Muslims together face attacks by ultranationalists spurred on by Orthodox Christian ideology. In addition, he frequently emphasizes that Sven Alcalay, Bosnia's ambassador to the U.S. and one of the main figures defending Balkan Muslims against aggression, is Jewish.

"In Bosnia the Serbs attacked the Catholics and the Muslims. In Kosovo the Serbs are attacking the Muslim majority among the Albanians as well as the Albanian Catholic minority. In the face of this, Albanian Catholic priests rush to defend Muslim victims, and our spiritual shaykhs, who have established many centers in Kosovo, throw their doors open to all who are under attack."

Kabbani is in close touch with Dr. Rexhep Boja, the mufti or main Muslim cleric, in Kosovo. But the matter of Kosovo also affects the situation in the U.S.--not only in Washington but also in local communities.

"We held a conference in Washington to stir the U.S. authorities to do more about Kosovo," he said. "I have appealed to our president, Mr. Clinton, the Congress and the U.S. government to take immediate, and if necessary, unilateral action in Kosovo. Just as the U.S. and NATO have acted to oppose Serbian oppression in the past, despite international reticence, we ask that such action be taken, this time for the victims in Kosovo! Let the U.S. show Milosevic that the United States does not tolerate aggression against innocent civilians."

The Washington conference, held by ISCA in August, was a major conclave of anti-extremist Muslims. Representation was particularly strong from the former Soviet Union, with numerous muftis in attendance from Tatarstan, the Caucasus, and other areas where Muslims are rebuilding their religious life after 80 years of Communist repression, sometimes genocidal.

In a particularly moving statement, Shaykh Mahomed Albogachiev, supreme mufti of the Ingushetia Republic, which borders Chechnya, pointed out that 60 percent of his nation, who now number only 300,000, had died in a mass deportation ordered by Communist dictator Stalin. "We were killed for our faith," he recalled with sorrow.

But he and Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov, who was the star figure at the conference, both averred that Saudi-backed fundamentalists claim the Chechens and Ingush are not "real" Muslims because they reject extremism promulgated by the fundamentalist Salafi/Wahabi sect, and call for Western-style democracy in their countries.

Another topic of discussion at the August conference was the anomalous legal situation of the Catholic church in Russia. The Yeltsin regime has granted legal status to four faiths: Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. But Catholicism--although its adherents include millions of Poles and Lithuanians, as well as Belarusian and Ukrainian Uniates, within the current Russian borders--has no legal standing.

Catholic and Uniate church properties cannot be regained by worshippers so long as this discriminatory rule remains in effect. But more importantly, the denial of recognition to Catholicism points to the constant threat of nationalist violence by those who, as in ex-Yugoslavia, would incite Orthodox Christian believers against their neighbors.

Shaykh Hisham is especially proud of the anti-Communist tradition embodied by the spiritual teacher he calls "grand-shaykh," Abd-Allah al-Faiz ad-Daghestani.

Shaykh ad-Daghestani was a major figure in the resistance movement against Communism in the Caucasus. He died in Damascus in 1973, at 82. "Before his death, grand-shaykh predicted that the United States would make peace between the Arabs and Israel, following the collapse of Russian Communism. He said America would remain the only great power in the world."

The situation in the former-Communist states, especially in Chechnya, brings him back to the Balkan crisis, and to the debate among American Muslims.

"The extremists want to talk about Iraq, about Israel, about India, but hardly ever mention Kosovo, where thousands of poor Albanian people are being slaughtered in the most brutal manner," he said with dismay. "They are almost as bad as the aggressors; to the Serbs, the Albanians are not human; to the Muslim extremists following the fundamentalist Salafi/Wahabi creed, the Albanians, who follow traditional Islam, are regarded as heretics. Either way they are condemned."

"As Muslims, we are ready to assist all the victims of oppression in the world," said Kabbani. "This is the core of our teaching as people of the spirit, and this is how we show that we are all servants of God."

In the end, he said, "God alone will judge all of us. On this, we and many Catholics must agree."