The House of Islam

by Ed Husain

  This is not an abstract idea, but another lived reality of anticipation that informs many aspects of contemporary Muslim life in a way that is widely disregarded in the West. In the pre-modern West the church, both as a building and as an idea, dominated public life. Churchyards were graveyards, and there was no social taboo surrounding death. Today, many people seek to postpone death and slow down the ageing process as much as possible, by use of Botox and every other imaginable means of delaying the inevitable. Even in the megachurches of evangelical America, the dead are no longer found at rest in gardens alongside the church buildings. We have removed the dead from our cities and placed them behind high walls in cemeteries on the outskirts, unseen by the human eye.

  The Prophet’s city of Medina buried its dead within walking distance of the mosque. The Prophet visited the cemetery regularly, and taught Muslims to do so too. Upon his own death, he was laid to rest within the mosque itself. Both of the first two caliphs, Abu Bakr and Omar, were buried beside him. This is not something unique to Islam: in Britain’s Westminster Abbey I see burial grounds of national figures such as Chaucer, Newton, Wilberforce, Dickens and Gladstone, and in the vault of St Paul’s Cathedral I see John Donne, Sir Christopher Wren and the Duke of Wellington.

  In Islam, entire Sufi orders were born around the burial places of saints, and continue to flourish around the tombs of saints across the Muslim world. Today the global Chishti order turns for spiritual connection to the divine at Muin ad-Din Chishti’s shrine at Ajmer in India. In Africa, when I visited Ahmed al-Tijani’s tomb in Fez, it was a vibrant hostel for students, teachers and worshippers.

  The dead and the living, this life and the next, are all still connected in the Muslim world. Even the non-Islamist heroes of the Arab Spring – from Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia to Khaled Said in Egypt – who were, and are, referred to as Muslim martyrs. Martyrdom is honoured in Islam to this day, as it once was in Christianity. The brave believers who died in the coliseums of pagan Rome inspired faith and reverence in the spectators, who slowly started to convert to Christianity. When secular leaders die in the modern Muslim world, they are still seen as martyrs even by secular political parties. Saddam Hussein’s supporters claimed he was a martyr; Palestinians referred to Yasser Arafat as a martyr. Victims of the Arab Spring, secular Syrian fighters for Bashar al-Assad, Emirati soldiers in Yemen – the list goes on.

  The Muslim belief in the afterlife only appears in Western public discourse as a crude caricature, when media reporting of suicide bombings perpetuates that old chestnut, the fallacy that a terrorist has killed himself to gain seventy-two female virgins in heaven. The jihadi does not need to die for sex; he can satisfy his desires in this world. He is not alone in his certainty that there is life beyond this world, but he is wrong if he thinks he is heading to heaven – as Muslim clergy were the first to highlight after the 9/11 attacks: the perpetrators were not martyrs but murderers. Only when put in those terms did the message of the al-Qaeda extremists find rebuttal in a language that resonated among Muslims.

  The earliest artwork in the Muslim world outside Arabia showed how Quranic imagery of the afterlife provided the inspiration for decorating mosques and public places. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem still have their decoration from 1,400 years ago showing a focus on greenery, trees, gardens and water, mirroring the Quranic vision of heaven.

  In Spain, first- and second-century Muslims built entire cities based on these Quranic images of gardens, flowing rivers, fountains and buildings glorifying God that are still attracting tourists to Córdoba and the Al-Hambra Palace. The spirit and values that informed that generation still inform today’s Muslims.

  We will meet our Maker. There is full certainty (yaqeen) on this among most Muslims. The Quran confirms that: ‘Every individual will taste death. And We [God] test you with evil and with good as trial; and to Us you will be returned.’1 Even if the most monumental fortresses are built, the Quran continues elsewhere, there is no escape from the reality of death and return to God. The doubt and uncertainty of liberal individualism has not yet affected this inner core of global Muslim identity and belief. When news of a death reaches a Muslim, be they Indonesian or Bengali or African, they will say in Arabic: ‘Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji‘un’ – ‘To God we belong and to God is our return’, a verse of the Quran recited on these occasions by all aware Muslims. At the time of greatest uncertainty in life among families and friends, in facing the unknown of death, Islam offers clarity and solace. Life has not ended, but begun anew in a higher realm.

  The language that Muslims use about death upholds the faith and convictions of an ancient community. I only became fully aware of this when my father passed away in February 2016. Amid the shock and pain of enduring loss, our Muslim family and friends, when expressing condolences, from Arab lands to India to Africa, all spoke about Dad’s day of Intiqal, or, literally, transfer or transport. The English phrase ‘pass away’ now had more meaning: the soul had passed from one domain to another. This was the Muslim position of expressing the belief in relocation of the human soul from the body to another level of consciousness, the Akhirah. Nor was Intiqal of the soul a private matter for the family. The power of faith was on full display. My mother and my siblings were surrounded by extended family support: they took it in turns to provide food, prayers, money, funeral organising assistance, burial of the body, and thereafter regular visits to the grave for recitals from the Quran to assure his soul that we remember Dad. In these good deeds there was a potent reminder that life is short, and Intiqal to the hereafter was the unavoidable fate for all of us. What we did for Dad, others will do for us when we depart this world. And these actions of virtue will outweigh our sins and help us enter the Heavens. This is the Muslim way of approaching life and death.

  Recital of the Quran takes centre stage for forty days as family and friends mourn the worldly departure of a believer. The Prophet forbade excessive crying and wailing for the deceased, however, because the believer has returned home to God. Muslims recall the Prophet on his deathbed, surrounded by his family and with his beloved daughter Fatima sadly shedding tears, as he advised his companions to be steadfast in prayer. He called Fatima over and whispered something in her ear. She came away, stopped crying and slowly started to smile. ‘What did the Prophet say to you?’ asked the Prophet’s wife, Ayesha. ‘That I will be the first to meet him in the next life,’ she replied. Fatima’s certainty and belief in her father’s words have informed Muslims throughout the centuries, and still console today’s believers, that they will meet God and the Prophet, and live in their original, heavenly home.

  The Sufi scholar Rumi, writing about his death, pictured it as his wedding day, when he would return to meet his beloved God. He cautioned Muslims not to be gloomy at his funeral, and encouraged them to bring drums to celebrate. He predicted that his burial in the rose beds of the sultan’s garden in Konya would draw people from East and West, and when I visited Konya I witnessed a spiritual jamboree of Japanese, Europeans, Arabs and Americans.

  Rumi’s whirling dervishes embody this attitude to death in their divinely inspired dance, which treats the human body as a reed flute through which our soul plays like music. The dervishes turn their right hands toward the heavens to absorb energy, which passes through their bodies and down through their left hands to Mother Earth as they twirl, while the world rotates in harmony. The dervishes’ dance, symbolising this, is popular in Iran, Syria, Turkey, the Balkans and parts of Muslim India.

  Yet the modern suicide bomber has subverted this sublime Muslim preparedness for eternal life, and hijacked the status of martyrs. The spiritual energy and soaring symbolism of the dervishes’ dance is being marginalised.

  Probably the most prominent and highly venerated female saint of early Islam was Rabia Adawiyya (d. 801) from the Iraqi city of Basra. One night she was walking with a burning torch of fire in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When people asked h
er where she was going, Rabia replied: ‘I want to set heaven aflame and extinguish the fire of hell.’ She wanted believers to worship Allah for and through love, not out of considerations of reward and punishment.

  Muslim scholars also recall that Imam Ali once prayed to God to be denied a place in heaven if he worshipped God only for hope of heaven. Love, longing and worship should not be for heaven but for God. The highest objective for the Muslim is Wajhullah, the Face of God. The Quran explains that a believer feeds orphans and the needy ‘for the face of God’, Li wajhillah, in order to delight in His ultimate beauty.

  Islam’s global staying power among its followers is and will remain strong for the foreseeable future for as long as Muslims are free to believe, and not forced to do so by fanatics enforcing Salafi sharia as state law. The centrality of God, the vibrancy of the Quran, the preservation of the rights of the sacred, the institutions of the family and the firm public belief in the afterlife all provide an unshakeable bedrock for the Muslim believer from generation to generation.

  But what of the immediate future? What are we to do about the current malaise of the Muslim world being exploited by Islamists and Salafi-jihadis, the widespread feelings of diminished dignity, loss of confidence, the rise of terrorism, poor educational provision, intolerance of Jews, and the repression of women and sexuality? How can Muslims tackle these issues in a way that makes it possible to create alliances with the West, rather than breed further enmity?

  Conclusion: The Way Forward

  Repeated experiments with Arab nationalism, European socialism, French laïcité, Islamism and jihadism have all failed in the Middle East. When the Prophet Mohamed migrated from Mecca to Medina in the year 622, he sought freedom to worship without fear and violence. Upon arrival in Medina, he did not accept the land for building his mosque as a gift: he insisted that the property be bought. He guided his companions to the markets in Medina to trade freely. He created a social contract with Jews and others in Medina, known as the Constitution of Medina, to bring an end to the bloodshed between tribes and thereby established the rule of law. During a period of drought and food shortage, he refused to fix prices, and said ‘These matters are in the hands of God.’

  Freedom, property rights, free trade, pluralism, the rule of law and human dignity are not creations of the modern West. They are universal cravings of the human soul. The peoples of the Middle East are entrepreneurial in spirit. Political suppression, poverty, extremism, indignity, humiliation, and corruption prevent them from realising their true potential. The mass protests in 2011 were a desperate cry for help.

  The Arab Spring is not over. The media caravan has moved on, but there is an undercurrent still alive and simmering. In time it will bring a generational and geostrategic shift in the region. Unless we understand and respond to the emotions and ideas of the young people of the Middle East, there will be yet more chaos and carnage, which will also eventually be visited upon streets and neighbourhoods in the West with greater ferocity. Too much blood has been spilled for the yearnings of the Arab uprisings to die. We may soon be caught off guard again, with millions pouring into Arab urban centres to face the tanks, terror and tyranny of their governments. The trauma of having witnessed shootings and killings, the loss of friends and family, and the dashing of high hopes for dignity and justice hangs over a generation. Their grandfathers failed in the revolts of the 1920s. Their fathers failed after the coups of the 1950s. Did they fail too in 2011? What will their children do?

  Five years on from the beginning of the Arab revolutions, four countries in the Middle East are now failed states, with daily loss of human life: Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Several others are fragile. The same forces that gave rise to the Arab revolutions in 2011, and to the ‘Green Movement’ in Iran in 2009, are still simmering away and could boil up again in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Iran or a number of other places. Turkey is no longer a home of democratic stability – military coups and ethnic tensions rumble. Pakistan and Afghanistan are teetering on the brink, with poor governance, security lapses and economic failures. Iran is meddling in the affairs of its neighbours in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. And then there is the abiding Arab–Israeli conflict. The world outside of these areas will not remain immune from the fires spreading in their neighbours’ houses.

  Instability and ineffective governance in the Middle East, as the historical, religious and emotional epicentre of the Muslim world, feed a global narrative of Muslims wallowing in victimhood and failure. Islamists amplify this state of loss with their networks on social media, universities, workplaces, and mosques. This then provides a breeding ground for Salafi-jihadi recruits, who blame the West and unleash violence rationalised by Salafi literalism, seeking victory or martyrdom. If they can expect, through self-destruction as suicide bombers, to find dignity in the afterlife, then the appeal of suicide missions will continue to spread. What do they have to live for? They see glory only in the next life.

  Globally, feelings of ignominy and betrayal are not confined to Muslims. The Germans, Russians, Indians and Chinese have all lost territories and empires. In the case of India, two large Muslim countries have been carved out of its land: Pakistan and Bangladesh. Why are Indians not becoming suicide bombers in a quest to restore the united, glorious India of old? Why are Russians not seeking to recapture their national sense of self-worth by hijacking aeroplanes or bombing Western public transport systems? Why are Africans, mass sufferers of poverty, corruption and injustice, not resorting to terrorism?

  When I wrote The Islamist in 2007, I warned about the rise of ideological extremism and the cravings for a caliphate among Islamists who are driving global Muslim opinion. I was accused at the time of being an alarmist. I wish I had been wrong. Today the West and ordinary Muslims are on a more dangerous and devastating trajectory. We must all realise that our direction of travel must change, or else it will certainly lead to more destruction. Largely unreformed and mostly failing Arab governments cannot keep the West and its populations secure from future threats.

  Ahmed El-Derawi, a PR executive, democracy activist and then parliamentary hopeful, looked elsewhere for dignity when the revolution in Egypt failed. He disappeared for a long time after President Morsi was toppled, and then resurfaced with this comment on Twitter in late 2015: ‘I have found justice in Jihad, and dignity and bravery in leaving my old life forever.’ He died as a suicide bomber for ISIS. El-Derawi is not alone in seeking dignity through death after failing to find meaning and worth in life.

  The prisons of the Arab world are full of Islamists and Salafists. Our Arab allies incarcerate their dissenters, and all of us pay the price through increased radicalisation. The ordinary Arab’s feeling of powerlessness needs to end. The Arab Spring was powerful because it granted agency to new peoples. Samir Kassir, in Being Arab, nails the problem:

  As a system of thought, jihadist Islamism is far from being the dominant ideology it is often portrayed as in the Western media. Yet it is powerful, no doubt because it is the only ideology that seems to offer relief from the victim status the Arabs delight in claiming (a status that in fact Islamism, jihadist or otherwise, is only too happy to confirm).

  There are lessons from other parts of the world – notably, but not uniquely, post-war Western Europe – that are instructive when it comes to seeking answers on how to reverse this collective cultural trend. It can be done. Peace can be found.

  In parallel to the contemporary Middle East, the anti-American narrative in South Korea was once tied up with American foreign policy and a US troop presence on South Korean soil. As in the Middle East, feelings were widespread of being ‘America’s pawn’, not least because of the American military presence in the region. The troops are still there today, yet South Korean attitudes have shifted. In 2002, leading South Korean musicians performed in a vast concert to protest against America, with fans furiously stamping on cardboard models of US military tanks. The concert and other anti-A
merican protests were, on the face of it, in response to an incident in which a US military vehicle struck and killed two teenage girls on a road outside Seoul, and a US court martial acquitted the American soldiers involved.

  Like Arabs, South Koreans were sensitive to the honour of their women being violated, and, like Arabs, they raised claims of a new American empire dominating their country, as other powers had done in the past. A poll in 2002 found that 75 per cent of young Koreans said they hated Americans – unusually for the time, given the international sympathy toward America after the 9/11 attacks. However, the opinions of a nation, a people, can change in a decade. South Korea, before the election of President Trump, was one of the most pro-American countries in the world, where eight in ten people have confidence in the US government’s international leadership.1

  Henry Kissinger captured the Middle East conundrum best when he wrote in World Order in 2014:

  A profusion of prophetic absolutisms has been the hallmark of a region suspended between a dream of its former glory and its inability to unify around common principles of domestic or international legitimacy. Nowhere is the challenge of the international order more complex – in terms of both organising regional order and ensuring the compatibility of that order with peace and stability in the rest of the world.

  Kissinger’s warning was serious. He was highlighting the failure of nation-states. But the catastrophe is compounded by the proliferation of Islamist and Salafist groups across the region: Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and ISIS are only a shadow of what is yet to come if we do not open up pluralist political spaces and wider economic participation.