Maryam Jameelah : 'With an eyeful of Madina's dust'

“You have to read these”, my friend compelled me, giving me a couple of yellowed, printed-long-ago sort of books. That gave me my first glimpse into the fascinating life and inspiring works of Maryam Jameelah.

Born as Margaret Marcus into an American Jewish family who cared little for religion and were active believers in the American Way, it was curious how that little girl refused to fit into that life and culture and came to realize it wasn’t the glittering American Dream, after all. She sought answers and found herself interested in the exotic and oriental. Young Maggie Marcus’s fascination with oriental cultures led her to meet many New York Arabs and Muslims, from where she was introduced to Islam.

At a relatively young age, Maryam began to study and to read up on Islam and Muslim culture. She found in Islam what the society around her lacked and never could give her. She found herself heartily in agreement. From then on, there was no going back. After her reversion to Islam in 1961, it became clear to her that New York couldn’t be her home any more. The odds were too many.

Soon after, Maryam began regularly corresponding with Muslim leaders and scholars throughout the world including Maulana Maudoodi, in whose ideas she found a close kinship. At his invitation, Maryam shortly moved to Pakistan and settled in Lahore. Here, she lives with her husband, four children and the extended family members, spending her days reading and writing regularly for the Muslim World Book Review on a wide range of issues and subjects related to Islam and the West, and the resurgence of Islam.

Maulana Maudoodi had once called Maryam Jameelah ‘a tropical sapling planted in the Arctic.’ Reading through the details in the biographies my friend had lent me, there was so much that truly moved one. What inspired me was how a young mind, with no Islamic influence around, grew to develop such a seasoned vision of Islam, such courage to enable her to resist all the tempting glamour of developed society. Her search was honest and it rested only after having achieved that which alone fulfilled. Masha Allah!

After her arrival in Pakistan, Maryam had to grapple with a totally different lifestyle and cultural milieu. She reminisces of the linguistic barrier, the climate she was totally unsuited to, the large family structure and the hygiene conditions. It could hardly be called ‘home’ for a young New Yorker. However, this cultural ‘leap’ Maryam Jameelah had undertaken was in fact also a ‘leap of faith’, making her amazingly resilient.

Some of the most beautiful passages in Maryam Jameelah’s biography which taught me much were about how the young New York girl seeks and appreciates the beauty in the simple ways of Muslim culture. For her, eating out of a common earthenware dish is beautiful for the warm sharing it involes; walking barefoot on a dirt floor and making ablution out of a clay pot are the simple, natural pleasures of life, the rare delights of the unsophisticated simplicity_ uncorrupted by materialism and artifice_ that is essential to Islam. She warms up to the largesse, generosity, hospitality of values engendered by Islam.

The flies, the heat, the dirt, the discomfort and inconveniences fail to bring low the indomitable spirit. Surely, the eyes beholding so much beauty in something a ‘Westernised’ mind would sneer at must be beautiful_ ‘wearing in the eyes the dust of Madina’, as Iqbal would have said.

Getting a fuller view of Maryam Jameelah, I ended up reading several of her works on Islam and the West, which were certainly deeply insightful, incisively critical_ the product of an analytical mind and a passionate heart. It was around then that my friend called up, and in high pitched tones of excitement, told me of a rare discovery: she had actually traced Maryam Jameelah to her home! She had simply followed the publishers’ address given at the back of one of her books_ printed back in the 70s, and praying ardently that they hadn’t shifted since then, actually sought out the place!

Next Saturday evening we were both threading our way through the streets of Sant Nagar_ not to forget stopping at the florist’s on the way to get a bouquet of ‘Nargis’_ decidedly ‘Nargis’_ we had to be as ‘oriental’ as would suit the occasion.On the way, observing the narrow, bumpy and dusty streets and the barefooted children playing around, I thought I could feel that beauty Maryam had sought in there too. This was so removed from the urbanized quarters_ an island within a monstrosity of ‘development.’ The car halted before an old house much like the ones around. We brightened up when a bright, cheerful and warm face appeared_ Moon Apa’s, who had facilitated the visit. She made us feel welcomed- rather, at home. I think I understood how Maryam Jameelah had so effortlessly managed to say ‘I belong.’

To my left, I saw a huge courtyard which immediately aroused the feeling of ‘dejavu’_ it clicked… I remembered a page from Maryam Jameelah’s biography… suddenly, the room filled up with gaily dressed women from the 70s laying out traditional sweetmeat dishes to welcome their guest from New York who had chosen to live among her companions in faith…

We said our Maghrib prayers in the drawing room where we were waiting adjacent to Maryam Apa’s room. Folding up the prayer mat, my heart thumping wildly, I couldn’t keep from looking at the dear old profile etched across the open window, at the head of silvery-white hair draped in a white dupatta’ (scarf), lowered on the prayer mat in sajdah. I felt the unspeakable blessdness of the moment filling up my veins. Some things just cannot be expressed…

Most of what we heard Maryam Apa say, we had already read in her books. But to see it come alive in the full-throated voice which had in it the energy and vitality of her rich heart; to see that ‘undying flame’ of the unbeaten spirit in the fine old eyes, and the deep-seated gratitude and thankfulness for the life she has lived was an experience unsurpassable. She brightened up sharing memories of the past, shyly smiling like a little girl, her beady eyes twinkling even though she was frail and volatile with age, exhausted and not very mobile any more.

Since she settled in Lahore, Maryam Jameelah has been a prolific writer. Her work reflects a deep, incisive and analytical understanding of Western culture and civilization. Being an ‘insider’, and not having lived in a colonial or postcolonial set up, she digs deep into the very foundations of American society and with a rare, refreshing vision and raw honesty, exposes it down to its bare bones. She feels intensely its spiritual bankruptcy and the toll materialism has taken on the life of the average American, reducing life to a struggle for material prosperity and comfort, no more.

However, the deeper questions remain unanswered, unresolved, and the inner self unsatiated:

It is this distressing evolutionary process that has today made America a slave of machines. The supremacy of the USA is accepted all over the world and its hand is seen in everything that happens anywhere. No country, Muslim or non-Mulsim, is altogether free from its control and domination. Today America has enslaved the world with its way of life but it has itself become the slave of machines. It is a prisoner of its lifestyle, of material progress, factories, laboratories and of fancy goods and gadgets. Man here has got so completely cast in the technological mould of life that his ideas and emotions have also become mechanical. The properties of rock and iron have entered into his soul. He has become narrow and selfish, cold and unfeeling. There is no warmth in his heart; no moisture in his eyes. This is the reality I have sadly observed during my stay in America.(As quoted by Maryam Jameelah in ‘The Resurgence of Islam and Liberation from our Colonial Yoke).

It is this dissatisfaction and disappointment with the deceptive sheen of the Western humanistic tradition and all it could ever offer that makes Maryam Jameelah embark on a search for meaningful life true to the purpose we are sent with, in tune with the ebb and flow of nature, imbued with simplicity and spirituality. She finds this fulfilment in Islam and Muslim culture, and this is where the seeker in her finds the anchor to hold on to. They say, ‘beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder’. The vision that rejected the emptiness of the culture of materialism and narcissism finds out the beauty of the ‘Muslim’ Way of Life:

The remedy for the problems of the modern world is the adoption of absolute transcendental values. The fallacy that everything must change with changing times makes life devoid of meaning and purpose since there is nothing of permanent worth. It is responsible for our ‘throw-away’ culture which considers everything disposable. The relativity of values is responsible for the unprecedented epidemic of vulgarity and obscenity in the mass media, of arts and entertainments, the generation gap, widespread alcohol and drug addiction and suicide as a leading cause of death. If everything must change with the changing times, human dignity and the nobility of character are almost impossible to achieve since these are based upon permanence and stability in the moral order.

Modern man desperately needs a Supreme Authority for reference to distinguish between what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is wrong, what is beautiful and what is ugly. This does not mean totalitarian dictatorship but the Rule of Law in the highest sense. Only the Divine Law of the Shariah is impartial and just; where ruler and ruled, rich and poor, young and old, celebrities and ordinary anonymous folk are equally subjected to its jurisdiction… the authority of the Shariah proceeds from Almighty Allah. Thus it is feared, esteemed, loved and obeyed simultaneously. It combines the internal sanctions of fear of Allah and His retribution in the Hereafter with severe but just punishments for violation of that law on which the health of the individual and society depend.

Her belief in Islam as the panacea and the absolute Good is powerful and authentic:

The call of Islam to modern man is the call to stability and inward peace. A society based on the precepts of fear and reverence for the Divine Law will not be troubled with crime, violence and lawlessness.…Individually, Islam would bring a direction, meaning and purpose to life which materialistic cultures cannot provide; an inward serenity and peace even in the midst of external frustrations and adversity… the ugliness of our environment would be supplanted by beauty…” (Islam and Modern Man)

Again, being originally an outsider, she does not take the ways of Islam dully as a habit but delights in its refreshing distinction from the materialism and artifice she has known and come to detest. Observing the contrast directly, closely and first hand, Maryam Jameelah’s later works show a seasoned understanding of the inner dynamics that make post-Enlightenment secular-liberal Western society what it is and the influences_ direct and indirect_ it exercises on what it calls the ‘developing’ predominantly Muslim world. She studies and presents an analysis of Western philosophy and traces its evolution till the point where a secular, capitalist-materialist social structure was realized. She analyzes the motives and methods of Western imperialism, colonial rule and the state of perpetual neo-colonialism the Muslim world labours under. She is bitterly critical of modernist Muslims who believe that in the Westernization and ‘modernization’ of Islam lies its hope for survival and progress:

The earliest modernizers in the Muslim world were dismayed by the contrast between the material backwardness of the Muslims and the dazzling energy and concrete accomplishments of Europe. They thought that if only the Muslims could imbibe modern knowledge through modern education, their people would become just as strong, progressive and prosperous.

Some, like Jamaluddin Afghani and Shaikh Muhammad Abduh sincerely believed that this was the proper road to Islamic revival in its call to modern man. The leaders of the Muslim countries accepted this advice without question. More than a century has passed since then but although all Muslim countries have adopted the Western s7stem as their own, they remain poor, weak, backward…

Yet the Orientalists and the modernizers insist that the Muslims are weak because they are not Westernized thoroughly enough and prescribe another dose of the same harmful diet. Those who merely imitate and not create, those who are always passive receptors instead of active givers are defeated in the inevitable course of events because their initial position is one of failure. The call of Islam to modern man can succeed only if it proceeds from a position of strength, independence and self-confidence.

Why is Westernization so attractive to the Muslims as it is for everyone else? It is irresistible because it is easy. Contemporary civilization is based upon self-indulgence while that of Islam requires sacrifice, altruism, discipline, self-control and endurance which are difficult. But self-indulgence leads to decadence and decline while the opposite qualities, which Islam demands, lead to superior strength, unity and virtue. If practiced in its right spirit, Islam leads to social integration. Self-indulgent materialism leads to social disintegration an ultimately collective suicide…

The times in which Maryam Jameelah’s writing is placed, the 1960s to 80s were when the groundwork for contemporary politics was being laid taking shape. Her analysis and observations therefore, help one understand the roots and implications of contemporary socio-political issues. Her work bears striking relevance to current-day dilemmas and issues_ certainly the vision of an eye gifted with foresight.

Although placed in times when the Muslim world was ravaged by modernist post-Kemalist reform movements like President Nasser’s in Egypt, Maryam Jameelah’s work is set apart, shunning all such influences, safely cocooned in her firm fidelity to the fundamental sources of Islam and her sensitive appreciation of Islamic tradition. She passionately defends this ignored treasure, showing it to the world in its unclouded, natural splendour. She believes in the eternal dynamism of Islamic tradition, its eternal relevance as a means to establish a viable egalitarian, peaceful, just and welfare-oriented society in the present day, modelled on the insights provided by the first Muslim community in Madina. She pleads her case convincingly and passionately:

“It is often asserted by orientalists that the values and ideals of traditional Islamic civilization have no relevance, even for Muslims today because, like all non-European cultures, it was the product of an antiquated tradition of the pre-scientific age. They assert that only secularity is relevant to modernity, to change, to continual technological innovations, and their social consequences. Since the genuine Muslim is a traditional man, he can therefore have nothing of relevance to contribute to the daily life of the modern man. But despite the drastic environmental transformation brought about by modern technology, the basic human drives and needs remain unchanged. Therefore modern man is just as thirsty for the spiritual sustenance which alone gives life its meaning, direction and purpose as was his ancestors, even if he is not consciously aware of it.

It is the purpose of those who call modern man to Islam to awaken him to the urgent intensity of these needs, not only for the individual but for the whole of human society. Unfortunately, there remains another great obstacle in the path of a modern appreciation of Islam. Islamic civilization was not only remote from modernity in the technological sense; it seems even more remote from the modern mind in its moral ideals, which cannot be appreciated by the secular man or even regarded by him as desirable. The spiritual ideals of Islam can be understood only by truly God-fearing people, who yearn for God’s mercy and salvation in the Hereafter.

Those who wish to call modern man to Islam must make him understand and appreciate such virtue which is utterly foreign and incomprehensible to the materialist. By an effective presentation of the profound richness of Islamic culture as an historical acuality in the life of the Muslims until the recent past, he must make the modern man appalled by the spiritual poverty in which he must live and long for a better life not limited to this world.” (Islam and Modern Man)

In the context of the contemporary dilemmas of achieving ‘liberation’, ‘pluralism’, ‘enlightened moderation’ outside of Islam and remoulding Muslim societies to toe the Western line and achieve the Western ideal of Secular-liberalism, Maryam Jameelah’s works have perhaps a relevance more than ever before.

While Muslims debate which ‘brand’ of Islam be adopted to appease the imperious demands of Western imperialism; while we concoct the smothering labels of ‘extremist’, ‘secular’, ‘modernist’, ,moderate’, ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ and seek an identity alien to our real, true essence, we need to rediscover the beauty and quiet superiority of the pristine ‘Muslim’ way as lived by the Prophet (S) of Islam and the earliest generation; we need to make that legacy speak to us again of our problems and dilemmas and provide a way forward.

Maryam Jameelah, in throwing overboard the naive presumptions she was socialized into, prejudices she inherited and wholeheartedly choosing to live by the way of Islam  with pride and passion, has a lot to teach us as we still grope in the darkness for an identity.

Maryam Sakeenah in Defiance Here and Here

Iran would never make atom bomb: Ayatullah Khamenei

“The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons and will never seek nuclear weapons as it has the capacity to challenge the nuclear-backed influence such powers rely on,” said Ayatollah Khamenei, leader of the Islamic Revolution in a Wednesday meeting in Tehran with the director and officials of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and nuclear scientists the Leader described the country’s nuclear and technological achievements further in line with national interests and beneficial for the future of the country.

“There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”

“If nations are allowed to independently make progress in the fields of nuclear energy, aerospace, science, technology and industry, there will be no room left for the tyrannical dominance of world powers,” said the Leader.

“Sanctions have been in place since the victory of the Islamic Revolution while the nuclear issue is a matter of the past few years; therefore their (the West) real problem is with a nation that has decided to be independent.”

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei addressed a meeting with head and officials of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and nuclear scientists in Tehran on February 22, 2011.  Here

Why is Europe afraid of the rise of Islam?

Italy has become the fourth country in Europe to act against the burqa, after France, Belgium and at least one city in Spain. Italian lawmakers have drafted a new law that will penalise women wearing the burqa and fine and jail men who force them to do so.

As Switzerland upholds a ban on minarets, and Germany's chancellor says multiculturalism has failed in Europe, are we seeing a nod to the Christian far right? Or is it the latest sign of the friction between races and religions?
An interesting debate in NDTV. Ankita Mukherji in her daily programme Politically Incorrect discusses this thorny issue with legendery parliamentarian Mani Shanker Aiyar and noted journalist Swapan Das Gupta.Watch the clash of the titans Here and Here

Norway is a wake-up call

Are we really living in end times? Every new day brings a new outrage, a new horror.  No one seems to be safe anywhere — not even in the serene, scenic Norwegian paradise. But then, as Bible warns, you reap as you sow. And Europe is reaping what its politicians and assorted purveyors of hatred have sowed all these years.

The perpetual demonization and vilification of “the Other” and the endless talk of creeping Shariah and Islamisation of Europe couldn’t have happened in a vacuum. It had to show its results someday on the ground. And it did in Norway this past week.

Still there are many out there who continue to live in denial. Within the first couple of hours, television pundits, from CNN’s Richard Quest to BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardener, had persuaded themselves that the Norway attacks were the handiwork of “Islamist terrorists.” Soon Rupert Murdoch’s Sun was screaming: “AL QAEDA MASSACRE: NORWAY’S 9/11”.


Next morning the whole thing was turned on its head when it turned out that it wasn’t the Muslims after all but Norway’s own homebred, all-white, Christian zealot behind Europe’s biggest mass murder by an individual in recent memory. The wonks were in no hurry to condemn Anders Behring Breivik as a “Christian terrorist” though.

They went to great lengths to paint him as a lone ranger who had turned the guns on his own kind in a fit of rage. He did not represent the peace-loving people of Norway or Europe for that matter, they asserted. Of course, he didn’t. But was he an aberration? Was it a random act of madness? I wouldn’t think so.
Indeed, the more details about the attacks emerge, the clearer it becomes it was no chance act of momentary madness. Breivik is the product of years of hate campaign and propaganda against Muslims. So most tragic as these attacks are, they shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, given the madness that has been going on in the name of fighting terror.

And those trying to portray Breivik as a lonely lunatic, an outsider, are not just wrong, they are out of sync with a dangerous reality. They are living in denial of the fast spreading malaise of rabid Islamophobia and intolerance on both sides of the Atlantic and its consequences.

This is not an isolated case of one man going off the bend but represents a growing threat. Breivik’s actions, patiently planned and executed over the past nine years, are entirely consistent with the periodic mass violence European fascists have carried out in recent years. More important, this “madness” was rooted in mainstream right-wing discourse that one even hears from politicians like Sarkozy.

There’s a method in the madness that targeted young Labour Party supporters on Utoya Island. Eskil Pedersen, the youth wing leader of the party, had been increasingly speaking for the Palestinians, calling for an international boycott of Israel.

The intense hatred for Edward Said, the Palestinian author of the seminal Orientalism who had the audacity to hold a mirror to the Empire, is matched by admiration for luminaries like Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer, all known for their “preoccupation” with Islam and Muslims.

So this monster’s manifesto indeed is Mein Kampf of our times, as The Economist puts it, in which Jews are replaced by Muslims as “the Enemy” who must be fought and expunged from the face of the earth. Breivik’s worldview is a lethal mix of Christian zealotry and extreme Islamophobia. And he isn’t alone.

Generations of Europeans and Americans have grown up on a heavy diet of bigotry peddled by politicians like Geert Wilders of Netherlands, who compared the Holy Qur’an to Hitler’s Mein Kempf, and Marine Le Pen of France and Newt Gingrich, Peter King and televangelists like Pat Robertson in the land of the free.

Feeding on the stereotypes and paranoia about Muslims, this new breed of fascism that not surprisingly turns to Israel for inspiration, poses a clear and present danger to our world. The gravest threat we face today comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of Muslims, as Chris Hedges argues.

Breivik has killed many more people than the four “Muslim” bombers did in the 7/7 London attacks. Indeed, more people may have died in the violence by neo-fascist, radical right groups since the Great War than all the attacks, blamed on Muslims, put together.

Yet Western governments have so far treated such groups with kid gloves. Just as successive governments in India have dealt with the Hindu extremists despite their implication in recent terror attacks and mass violence targeting Muslims. Indeed, police turn on the victims after every such atrocity.

Inaction is a luxury the world cannot afford though, if it is to avoid more mindless carnage and a bigger conflict — in the West or in India. If we continue the way we are going, the confrontation that Samuel Huntington obsessed over all his life cannot for long remain an academic hypothesis. Norway is a wake-up call. Let’s not wait for the next great war to take place between Islam and the West.

Aijaz Zaka Syed in Arab News. Here

Why do the westerners hate Muslims?

Why is there such strong anti-immigrant sentiment in the industrialized democracies, and why does it get focused on Muslims? The shooting rampage and bombing by anti-immigrant Islamophobe Anders Breivik has raised these questions to a fever pitch. But the answers are just not obvious.

I’m not generally a big fan of Milton Friedman. I like my food and drugs and banks regulated, and think I know what happens when they aren’t. But on immigration issues, Friedman had some important insights. Immigration is mostly a response to labor demand, and it is probably fruitless to try to control it too closely. And it could even be economically counter-productive to do so, as Arizona is finding out.

It is mostly a myth that immigrants take jobs away from locals. The places in the US with the highest immigrant populations are not the places with the highest rates of local unemployment. Many immigrants do jobs that locals do not want to do, like pick strawberries or clean toilets in hotels. Others are high-skilled people with imagination who think up ways of enriching people that locals never would have. Remember that labor demand is elastic, not fixed. Sometimes immigrants do labor that just would not get done otherwise (California would have to import strawberries and pay more for them). The evidence is that immigration actually [pdf] benefits the host economy pretty much across the board.

If they are able to do so, labor immigrants tend to return home when the labor market contracts and there is no work for them. (This is the irony of the wall-builders in the US– they are probably forcing immigrants to stay in this country who would otherwise leave).

Let us just consider Poland. In the past 7 years, since it joined the European Union, Poland has lost 2 million residents, declining from 38 to 36 million. At least one million of those are estimated to be permanent emigrants. Most have gone to the British Isles and to Ireland.

Britain has over half a million immigrant Poles now, and they are second only to Indians as hyphenated Britons. The tabloid press has been accused of whipping up anti-Polish sentiment.

But it is baffling. Britain gained the skills of immigrant Poles without having to pay for their educations for the most part. They would not have come if they could not have found jobs that employers would hire them to fill, which means that they met a demand for labor. (Contrary to what some people believe who have not studied economics, labor demand in a society is elastic– it isn’t a zero-sum game, and the pie can expand. A zero-sum game is one where the pie stays the same size and if one person gets more of it, somebody else gets less. Half a million new Polish-British citizens might buy British-made goods and create more jobs). Poles are from a Catholic background and that might make for integration issues in largely Protestant Britain, except that I don’t think young Poles are mostly very religious. Nor are the British. As for ideology, the Poles are hardworking capitalists in this generation and one can only imagine the Margaret Thatcher types approving of them.

Even by 2006, former East Bloc immigrants to Britain were estimated to be contributing over $4 bn. a year to the British economy. The British response to this windfall? The government has now implemented a cap on the immigration of [non-EU] skilled workers that is likely to hurt economic growth! The number of high-skilled workers in a society is predictive of economic growth there, and all the countries that ever amounted to anything brought in a lot of them from abroad. Of course, it is desirable that the wealth they help create be taxed and used to educate and train people of the country for the future, as well. But, again, it is not a zero sum game. Sullen, poor, nationalist little countries that keep out foreigners seldom generate the resources to educate their own high-skilled workers and entrepreneurs, and so they stay sullen, poor, little nationalist countries.

In contrast, Poland has lost 2 million energetic, educated, mainly young people, and half of it is a long-term loss. So who has done better out of this immigration? Britain or Poland? What have the British really got to complain about here? Note that Poland could lose another million citizens permanently over the next generation. Who will support their old? Where will their productivity come from?

Poles are second only to Indians in numbers as immigrants. There are at least half a million and perhaps over a million Hindus in the UK. I am sure they face some discrimination. But I’ve never heard of loonies stocking weapons and killing people over their presence in Britain. Barry Kosmin estimated about a million in the US as I recall. Despite some Indophobia, Western host societies don’t obsess about Hindu immigrants the way they do about Muslim.

Informed comment by Professor Juan Cole. Here

Rise of Islam in Europe

Eversince 9/11 the quest to know about Islam has been increasing manifold. More and more people - men and women - embrace Islam every day everywhere. This trend is more visible and vibrant in Britain and parts of Europe. Here is an enlightening report from BBC.

What a billion Muslims think?

Opinion polls fascinate me. They are, if honestly conducted, perhaps the best possible way of gauging public opinion. At a time when spin is the norm and global media is controlled, manipulated and dictated by powerful corporate interests and governments, it’s not easy to get a clear picture on any given issue.

This is especially true when the story involves marginalized minorities and dispossessed groups. And of late the Muslims have been at the receiving end. After the disintegration of Soviet Union, the West found itself a new enemy in Islam.

The 9/11 attacks in the US and 7/7 strikes in the UK were only excuses, not the causes, to hasten this process. They might have contributed to the current hysteria against everything Islamic but they never were the Original Sin as we’ve been given to believe.

Myths like this have been demolished in a most interesting survey conducted by Gallup. What makes this opinion poll like no other is that it was conducted over a period of six years, beginning after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Gallup conducted research in 35 Muslim countries, interviewing more than 50,000 people, to come up with what it calls the first comprehensive survey of Muslim world opinion.

The results have also given birth to a book called, Who Speaks for Islam? What a billion Muslims really think by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed.

The poll and the book offer a much-needed reality check on the relations between the West and Muslim world. Some of the findings are genuinely surprising even for someone like me who has been obsessed with the issue.

Many conclusions of the poll only go to confirm what we in the Muslim world have always known but couldn’t succeed in putting them across to our friends in the West. For instance, the fact that it’s not Islamic teachings that drive some individuals to violence but historical injustices inflicted and perpetuated by some Western powers.

Which is why one so hopes that the urgent message this poll seeks to convey reaches the Western audience — and the wider world. It would be such a shame if it doesn’t. Because, as Dalia Mogahed argues in the book, this ostensible conflict between Islam and West is far from inevitable.

Many concerned commentators have repeatedly argued that what is fuelling the so-called clash of civilizations is not some absurd hatred of Christian West sanctioned by Islam but Western ignorance about Muslims. The poll backs this argument.

Most Muslims, regardless of where they live, whether in Saudi Arabia or Iran, are surprisingly well informed about the West and its values and ideals. In fact, most of them admire the West for its scientific achievements, economic progress and celebration of knowledge and excellence. The West is admired for the political freedom, democracy and rights it offers its people.

There are other findings that are equally interesting. Contrary to common perceptions in the West, the majority of respondents think men and women have equal rights. A whopping 94 percent of Indonesians share this view. Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim nation. In Iran, the figure is 89 percent. And in Saudi Arabia, it’s 73 percent.

A great majority of Muslims also believe a woman can work outside her home in any job for which she is qualified (88 percent in Indonesia, 72 percent in Egypt and 78 percent in Saudi Arabia). And they also believe women should be able to vote without interference (87 percent in Indonesia, 91 percent in Egypt, 98 percent in Lebanon).

And what about the supposed Muslim sympathy for terrorism? While 6 percent of the Americans think attacks involving civilians are “completely justified,” in Saudi Arabia this figure is 4 percent. In Lebanon and Iran, it’s 2 percent.

And mark this, it’s important. The majority of Muslims absolutely rejects violence and terrorism. In fact, many of the respondents quoted Qur’anic verses to point out that extremism goes against Islamic teachings.
Going by these findings, would any reasonable person in his right mind blame Islam for extremism and violence? And remember, the survey was not sponsored by Al Jazeera, Bin Laden’s favorite channel, but by Gallup, the biggest name in the business.

So what is it then that drives the West and Muslim world apart? The answer lies in Western indifference, nay casual contempt, for a billion believers and all that they believe in. I am not saying this; Gallup poll does.
Again this shouldn’t come as a surprise. While admiring Western values such as democracy and freedom, Muslims feel these values are conveniently cast aside when it comes to applying them to Muslim world.

More than 65 percent of Egyptians, Jordanians and Iranians believe the US will never allow people in the Middle East to run their own affairs and chart their own course.

When the Gallup pollsters asked Muslims around the world what the West could do to improve relations with the Muslim world, the most frequent responses called for greater respect for Islam and treatment of Muslims as equals, not as inferior.

The Western contempt for Islam, especially the ignorance of Americans, is not something imagined by us. The poll findings speak for themselves. The majority of Americans (66 percent) admit to having “some” prejudice against Muslims; one in five say they have “a great deal” of prejudice. Almost half do not believe US Muslims are “loyal” to their country; and one in four doesn’t want a Muslim as a neighbor!

Given these views, is it any surprising that Muslims are invariably portrayed as terrorists in the US media, including that big propaganda machine called Hollywood?

If the Muslims harbor some degree of anti-US sentiment, it’s not because of what the Americans are but because of what they do or have been doing in the Muslim world. But how would you explain the deep-seated paranoia and Islamophobia in the US and West?

Whatever its causes, this divide is unfortunate and unnatural. Because there is a great deal lot that unites the Muslims and Americans. In an increasingly materialistic world, they continue to hold on to their belief in God.
Unlike in Europe and much of the world, religion plays a healthy role in the day-to-day life of the Americans as well as Muslims. They both cherish universal values like honesty, truthfulness, hard work, accountability and being always loyal to your family.

Just look around. What we have in common is much more than what we do not. Which is why this divide is such a tragedy. We Muslims want to bridge this gulf. Is the other side equally willing?

Aijaz Zaka Syed in Arab News. More Here.