A Quiet Revolution by Leila Ahmed

Author:Leila Ahmed [Ahmed, Leila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Islam, History, Social Science, Customs & Traditions, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9780300181432
Google: e8RvpwAACAAJ
Amazon: 0300181434
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2012-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

El Fadl’s books certainly deepened the rift between him and the dom- inant Muslim organizations of America, but they did not draw the strong public response from American Muslim organizations that Sheikh Hisham Kabbani’s attack would provoke. Kabbani was the representative in Amer- ica of a Sufi order based in Cyprus, the Naqshbandi-Haqqani. He headed, at the time, a relatively small organization based in Flint, Michigan.

Testifying at an Open Forum at the State Department in 1999, Kab-

bani complained that there were Muslim organizations that had “hi- jacked the mike” and were claiming to be speaking on behalf of the Muslim community. Those organizations, he said (not naming any but implying a reference to ISNA and the MSA), were not the moderates but the extremists. Those “advising the media or advising the government are not the moderate Muslims,” he said. He continued: “Those whose opin- ion the government asks are the extremists themselves. Those that have been quoted in newspapers, in the magazines, [on] the television, in the media, are the extremists themselves. You are not hearing the authentic voice of Muslims, of moderate Muslims, but you are hearing the ex- tremist voice of Muslims.”33

Attributing the rise of extremism to the spread of Wahhabism, an ideology that, as Kabbani noted, was fiercely opposed to Sufism, Kab- bani went on to say that this extremist ideology was spreading fast in the universities through the national organizations and associations that had

been established. Extremists had taken over, he said, “more than 80 per-

cent of the mosques.” Moreover, their organizations commonly raised funds ostensibly for charitable activities but in reality much of the money was used, said Kabbani, for other purposes, including “buying weapon arsenals.”

Kabbani’s comments drew swift response from a number of Mus- lim American organizations, among them ISNA and the MSA and CAIR, who issued a joint statement pointing out that Kabbani’s congressional testimony had “put the entire American Muslim community under un- justified suspicion. In effect Mr. Kabbani is telling government officials that the majority of American Muslims pose a danger to our society.”34 Others would be critical of Kabbani as well, among them Robert Seiple,‌

ambassador at large for religious liberty in the Clinton administration, who observed that Kabbani’s comments “about 80 percent of the lead- ership of Islam in America being extremists are irresponsible and terri-

bly unfortunate,” and that such a viewpoint “just plays into the hands of those who would demonize and create division, and those knee-jerk types who see Islam as a monolith.”35

The criticisms and denunciations of Muslims and Islamists launched by pundits and journalists such as Pipes and Emerson and others, as well as the attacks that came from Muslims who did not share the views, goals, and understandings of Islam of Islamists and their organizations, and who resented their dominance in the American Muslim landscape,

would of course only grow fiercer and more intense in the wake of 9/11,

as the American administration launched its war on terror.

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