On Reason and Religion
We'll start with Zindani, and all his contradictions. We'll start with the radical, fire-breathing Yemeni cleric who is obsessed with science. We'll start with the man indicted by the US Treasury Department for supporting international terrorism who remains one of the three most powerful men in Yemen, the country that is the United States' strongest Arab ally in the war against radical Islam. It is fitting to start with him, the learned and respected cleric who sits at the nexus of religion and politics with the intellectual heft that Osama bin Landen and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi only pretend to carry.
And why is Zindani popping up? A little news story in the Yemen Observer, the leading English-language paper in that country hard on the southwestern edge of the Arabian pennisula, announces that Zindani has opened an AIDS clinic, and has already healed three patients of the seemingly incurable scurge. One gets the idea that this was done not by faith alone.
But not by medicine alone, either. Zindani likes to blend cultures, making his own imaginative mix. Don't think, though, that Zindani is a cultural relativist, mixing and matching what he likes about different traditions as a happy, bride-building peace offering: he is not about to form a drum circle. Indeed, Zindani uses the his Salafist (a brand of Isalm that is kising cousins with the Wahabbism practiced by bin Laden) roots to undermine western knowledge, and to convince the faithful of the superiority of his muscular theology.
This is why Zindani can not be dismissed as the cartoonish nutjob the AIDS article suggests. Would that he were so dismissable! It is easy to see why he could be brushed off: with his henna-dyed beard and virulent sermons, Zindani is the archetype a lazy writer for the Tom Clancy Book Factory would dust off when he needed the "Fiery Islamic Preacher" character. The relative obscurity of Yemen only adds to his anonymity with Westerners. But there are many reasons why he can not be brushed off as a third-world freakshow, tempting as it may be.
One is his intellectual respectability, which culminates in his appropiation of Western science to be used against itself. But we'll get to that soon. To put it in context, it is important to understand the role of Yemen is the US-led war on radical Islam. The current author has a broader article on the subject, which will explain Yemeni politics, including the Zindani indictment, in more depth, but here a summary will do. Zindani's indictment on charges of providing material support to al-Qaeda was merely one of the more important moments in the confused and difficult US-Yemeni partnership. After September 11th, Yemen was a country mentioned in the same breath as Afghanistan as a hotbed of terrorism and a possible site for US military intervention. And it was true: Yemen was in many areas lawless and overrun with Islamist sympathizers. But President Ali Abdullah Saleh, nothing if not a survivor, threw himself into the mix and began to root out the criminal element in his society, and has done an excellent job.
Zindani, though, is the wrench in the machine (he might see himself as more of the duex ex machina here; let's hope he is wrong). He is extremely powerful and influential in Yemen, and President Saleh cannot go after him. Zindani is untouchable. And as long as he keeps preaching, and is able to have splashy public appearances, as he still has, he remains the man that can push Yemen back into the "badguy" column. The complicated politics of Yemen leave Saleh with little choice but to continue legitimizing Zindani.
And make no mistake, Zindani is a danger. The Treasury Department, in its indictment, lists him as one of bin Laden's mentors. This is a controversial claim, but it doesn't have to be literal to be true. Zindani was, in fact, a top recruiter for the Afghan war against the Soviets (Yemen sent more jihadis than did any country except Saudi Arabia), and may have ran into bin Laden. But even if he didn't sit down and preach to him, the mark of Zindani's long career as a theologian can be seen in the words of bin Laden.
(A brief aside: Zindani was among many who promoted the notion that Jews were behind the September 11th attacks, in collaboration with President Bush, of course. His best moment may have come, though, when an interviewer for al-Arabiyya asked him about his call to kill Americans in the run-up to the Iraqi invasion. Zindani asked why the interviewer was singling him out, pointing out the many westerners who protested against the war. Yes...but there may be a difference there. This is exactly the kind of tortured mental gymnastics that mark a true fanatic.)
It is in science, though, that Zindani is at his most pernicious. In 1984, the Saudi government welcomed Zindani, who was no longer in Yemen for reasons of domestic politics, into its arms. They founded the Commission on Scientific Signs of Quran and Sunnah. This was to show the compatibility of Islam and modern science- but not in the way that "Intelligent Design" or (worse) "Creation Scientists" try to sneak faith into discussions of reason. Zindani is both more blatant and more sneaky than that. He attempts to show, through twisted metaphor and leading questions to polite scientists, that all of the knowledge in the world is already shown in the Quran. His site, http://www.it-is-truth.com/, is a culmination of his "research."
During the last couple of decades, the Commission has been bringing scholars (sometimes respectable ones) from around the world to read portions of the Quran and various hadiths- sayings of the Prophet- and seeing if they jive with their research. The results are occassionally astounding, and It Is Truth claims It Has Converted many former secularists.
A good example of this is perhaps the most widely quoted one, which I have seen several times throughout the Arab world. There is a hadith where the Prophet tells (and this is with the exact punctuation from the site) "The hereafter will not come...until the lands of Arabs are one again pasture lands filled with rivers." Professor Kroner, Chairman of the Department of Geosciences at Johannes Gutenberg University, explains that a new Ice Age is coming again, and when that happens, yes, Arabia will be lush and green. Professor Kroner's predictions can be disputed, but not by It-Is-Truth. It asks how Mohammed could possibly know this, and one has to answer there is no way he could. However, the ellipses in the quote are crucial. The beginning of the hadith reads "The hereafter will not come until the sun rises in the West." It seems the Prophet's words were less a geo-physical prophecy than a depiction of general fucked-upedness.
Of course, there are some things that can't be justified by torturing science, theology and language in his (sadly not unique) way. But there is an answer for this. When the two obviously contradict, the believer "must take the verse of the Quran without hesitation over any scientific 'fact'". But exactly!
This is not just for laughs. This is actually a terrifyingly seductive mindset, and it is one that can win more Muslims over to radicalism than the stock "enemies are everywhere" lines. It shows the absolute perfection of Islam. And if Zindani can show one how Islam is perfect, than how can we argue with anything he says? It is the zenith of the radical mindset.
Zindani is, sadly, not too different from many people in the west, particularly America. His perfectly rational insanity is similar to, say, Jerry Falwell or James Dobson. It differs only in degree.
But it is a terrifying degree. The reason the article has focused so much on Zindani is not because he is colorful but because he is influential. The Saudis gave him money to fund thousands of schools, all with his curriculum. Many are called, sickeningly, scientific institutions. They all teach the impeccable nature of the Quran, the decadence of the West, the glorious history of the Islamic world, and the path to bring history into the present.
This, then is the ultimate synthesis of science and anti-science, of thought and reaction, of purity and violence. One sees it outcome in the case of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the top Pakistani nuclear scientist who tried to sell secrets to Iran and Libya so that the faithful could level the playing field- so that they could get their own copies of what Pakistan called "The Muslim Nuclear Bomb." This is not a fruitful blend of science and religion: it is the destruction of science, of rationalism, by religious fanaticism.
That is why we need to recognize the intellectual trends of radical Islam. Because it is, at its heart, a theological movement, centuries old, and not a reaction to either America's freedom nor its foriegn policy sins. It is upsetting, then, that so many in America are infected with the same disdain for rationalism. When one becomes a gross parody of the enemy, one can never finally win.
And why is Zindani popping up? A little news story in the Yemen Observer, the leading English-language paper in that country hard on the southwestern edge of the Arabian pennisula, announces that Zindani has opened an AIDS clinic, and has already healed three patients of the seemingly incurable scurge. One gets the idea that this was done not by faith alone.
But not by medicine alone, either. Zindani likes to blend cultures, making his own imaginative mix. Don't think, though, that Zindani is a cultural relativist, mixing and matching what he likes about different traditions as a happy, bride-building peace offering: he is not about to form a drum circle. Indeed, Zindani uses the his Salafist (a brand of Isalm that is kising cousins with the Wahabbism practiced by bin Laden) roots to undermine western knowledge, and to convince the faithful of the superiority of his muscular theology.
This is why Zindani can not be dismissed as the cartoonish nutjob the AIDS article suggests. Would that he were so dismissable! It is easy to see why he could be brushed off: with his henna-dyed beard and virulent sermons, Zindani is the archetype a lazy writer for the Tom Clancy Book Factory would dust off when he needed the "Fiery Islamic Preacher" character. The relative obscurity of Yemen only adds to his anonymity with Westerners. But there are many reasons why he can not be brushed off as a third-world freakshow, tempting as it may be.
One is his intellectual respectability, which culminates in his appropiation of Western science to be used against itself. But we'll get to that soon. To put it in context, it is important to understand the role of Yemen is the US-led war on radical Islam. The current author has a broader article on the subject, which will explain Yemeni politics, including the Zindani indictment, in more depth, but here a summary will do. Zindani's indictment on charges of providing material support to al-Qaeda was merely one of the more important moments in the confused and difficult US-Yemeni partnership. After September 11th, Yemen was a country mentioned in the same breath as Afghanistan as a hotbed of terrorism and a possible site for US military intervention. And it was true: Yemen was in many areas lawless and overrun with Islamist sympathizers. But President Ali Abdullah Saleh, nothing if not a survivor, threw himself into the mix and began to root out the criminal element in his society, and has done an excellent job.
Zindani, though, is the wrench in the machine (he might see himself as more of the duex ex machina here; let's hope he is wrong). He is extremely powerful and influential in Yemen, and President Saleh cannot go after him. Zindani is untouchable. And as long as he keeps preaching, and is able to have splashy public appearances, as he still has, he remains the man that can push Yemen back into the "badguy" column. The complicated politics of Yemen leave Saleh with little choice but to continue legitimizing Zindani.
And make no mistake, Zindani is a danger. The Treasury Department, in its indictment, lists him as one of bin Laden's mentors. This is a controversial claim, but it doesn't have to be literal to be true. Zindani was, in fact, a top recruiter for the Afghan war against the Soviets (Yemen sent more jihadis than did any country except Saudi Arabia), and may have ran into bin Laden. But even if he didn't sit down and preach to him, the mark of Zindani's long career as a theologian can be seen in the words of bin Laden.
(A brief aside: Zindani was among many who promoted the notion that Jews were behind the September 11th attacks, in collaboration with President Bush, of course. His best moment may have come, though, when an interviewer for al-Arabiyya asked him about his call to kill Americans in the run-up to the Iraqi invasion. Zindani asked why the interviewer was singling him out, pointing out the many westerners who protested against the war. Yes...but there may be a difference there. This is exactly the kind of tortured mental gymnastics that mark a true fanatic.)
It is in science, though, that Zindani is at his most pernicious. In 1984, the Saudi government welcomed Zindani, who was no longer in Yemen for reasons of domestic politics, into its arms. They founded the Commission on Scientific Signs of Quran and Sunnah. This was to show the compatibility of Islam and modern science- but not in the way that "Intelligent Design" or (worse) "Creation Scientists" try to sneak faith into discussions of reason. Zindani is both more blatant and more sneaky than that. He attempts to show, through twisted metaphor and leading questions to polite scientists, that all of the knowledge in the world is already shown in the Quran. His site, http://www.it-is-truth.com/, is a culmination of his "research."
During the last couple of decades, the Commission has been bringing scholars (sometimes respectable ones) from around the world to read portions of the Quran and various hadiths- sayings of the Prophet- and seeing if they jive with their research. The results are occassionally astounding, and It Is Truth claims It Has Converted many former secularists.
A good example of this is perhaps the most widely quoted one, which I have seen several times throughout the Arab world. There is a hadith where the Prophet tells (and this is with the exact punctuation from the site) "The hereafter will not come...until the lands of Arabs are one again pasture lands filled with rivers." Professor Kroner, Chairman of the Department of Geosciences at Johannes Gutenberg University, explains that a new Ice Age is coming again, and when that happens, yes, Arabia will be lush and green. Professor Kroner's predictions can be disputed, but not by It-Is-Truth. It asks how Mohammed could possibly know this, and one has to answer there is no way he could. However, the ellipses in the quote are crucial. The beginning of the hadith reads "The hereafter will not come until the sun rises in the West." It seems the Prophet's words were less a geo-physical prophecy than a depiction of general fucked-upedness.
Of course, there are some things that can't be justified by torturing science, theology and language in his (sadly not unique) way. But there is an answer for this. When the two obviously contradict, the believer "must take the verse of the Quran without hesitation over any scientific 'fact'". But exactly!
This is not just for laughs. This is actually a terrifyingly seductive mindset, and it is one that can win more Muslims over to radicalism than the stock "enemies are everywhere" lines. It shows the absolute perfection of Islam. And if Zindani can show one how Islam is perfect, than how can we argue with anything he says? It is the zenith of the radical mindset.
Zindani is, sadly, not too different from many people in the west, particularly America. His perfectly rational insanity is similar to, say, Jerry Falwell or James Dobson. It differs only in degree.
But it is a terrifying degree. The reason the article has focused so much on Zindani is not because he is colorful but because he is influential. The Saudis gave him money to fund thousands of schools, all with his curriculum. Many are called, sickeningly, scientific institutions. They all teach the impeccable nature of the Quran, the decadence of the West, the glorious history of the Islamic world, and the path to bring history into the present.
This, then is the ultimate synthesis of science and anti-science, of thought and reaction, of purity and violence. One sees it outcome in the case of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the top Pakistani nuclear scientist who tried to sell secrets to Iran and Libya so that the faithful could level the playing field- so that they could get their own copies of what Pakistan called "The Muslim Nuclear Bomb." This is not a fruitful blend of science and religion: it is the destruction of science, of rationalism, by religious fanaticism.
That is why we need to recognize the intellectual trends of radical Islam. Because it is, at its heart, a theological movement, centuries old, and not a reaction to either America's freedom nor its foriegn policy sins. It is upsetting, then, that so many in America are infected with the same disdain for rationalism. When one becomes a gross parody of the enemy, one can never finally win.
posted by cairobrian | 1:03 PM
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