Nasr Abu Zayd: Was he a Muslim?

This question was prompted by Nasr Abu Zayd's obituary which appeared in the New York Times, Tues, July 6, 2010. MENA, the offical Egyptian news agency, said he died in a Cairo hospital where he was being treated for an unidentified illness. He was 66.

The obituary said that Dr. Zayd believed that Islam "should be understood in terms of its historical, geographic and cultural background." He added "that 'pure Islam' did not exist." The Koran he said, "was a collection of discourses."

Western academics in reviewing his book, "Voice of an Exile: Reflctions on Islam" (2004) praised it for its scholarship. Reuters quoted Dr. Zayd, as saying in 2008 that "religion has been used, politicized, not only by groups, but also (by) official institutions in every Arab country." "The distinction between 'the domain of religion and secular space,' he said, 'had been eroded.'"

"(Dr. Zayd) argued that the Koran was both a literary and religious text, a view that clashes with the Islamic idea that the holy book is the final revelation of God.'"

As per the NY Times account, an Egyptian Shariah court in 1995, declared Dr. Abu Zayd an apostate from Islam. The court annulled his marriage, effectively forcing him and his wife into exile. Death threats, notably from the Islamic Jihad group led by Ayman al-Zawahri, who has since become deputy leader of Al Qaeda, caused Dr. Zayd and his wife to leave for the Netherlands .

In recent years, Dr. Abu Zayd quietly returned to Egypt, first for lectures and later for health reasons.

So, to repeat my question, was Dr. Abu Zayd a Muslim?

It is interesting that no such question arises regarding Grand Ayatollah Fadlallah, the top Shiite cleric in Lebanon, whose obituary appeared in the NY Times on Monday, July 5, 2010. His writings and preachings inspired the Dawa Party of Iraq and a generation of militants, including the founders of Hezbollah. He was "one of the most learned and influential Shiite 'spriitual references.'" As per the NY Times, "he famously justified suicide bombings and other tactics of asymmetrical warfare by arguing that if Israel and its allies used advanced weaponry, Islam permitted the use of any weapons in retaliation."

No question here, Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah was indeed a Moslem. And, if Fadlallah was a Muslim, its hard to see how Dr. Abu Zayd could have been one too.

What is this thing called Islam?

It's been noted by any number of political observers that for the Obama administration not to be candid and forthright as to whom it is that we're fighting makes little sense. People repeatedly point out that those who sent passenger planes into the Twin Towers were Muslims, that the serviceman who murdered his fellow servicemen was a Muslim, that the shoe bomber, the would-be Times Square bomber, and the underwear bomber were all Muslims. It should also be kept in mind that the Jihadists have murdered people throughout Europe.

The left seems unable to acknowledge this simple fact. Those who bemoan the administration's failure to properly identify who it is we're fighting argue that you can't really wage a genuine effort against an enemy if you don't identify him. And, there is a great deal of merit to this argument.

However, there is an equal, and perhaps even more important, argument against not naming the enemy and that's the harm it does to the millions of genuinely good Muslims throughout the world. Muslims who suffer the same injury and death from our true enemy, the Salafist Muslims, also known as Jihadi fanatics. (It is these extremists who constitute the Wahhabi sect that holds sway in Saudi Arabia. )

Just as Christianity has had leaders who took their religion in different directions, e.g. Eastern Rite Catholics, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, etc., so too have Muslims gone in a variety of different directions. We have, for example, Sufi Muslims, and Amadiyya Muslims. Then, too, spun off from the Shiites are the Baha'i. Here in America, we have Reform Muslims who have given a more humane interpretation to the Quran and who reject the Hadith and the Sunnah. This has led them to reject Sharia.

So why are we not generally more aware of these groups. Why have they gotten so little recognition? It's because the more extreme Salafist interpretation of Islam has gained ascendancy through violence and intimidation. The Amadiyya have been brutalized in Malaysia and Pakistan. The Sufi recently suffered a horrendous suicide bombing in their mosque in Pakistan. Only here in America and in other democracies have these other, less violent, forms of Islam prospered.

So why don't we make an effort to distinguish between these various from of Islam?

In a word, the answer is "oil;" more specifically, Saudi oil. Saudi billions have been spent fostering the more malignant forms of Islam throughout the world. Here in the U.S., the NAIT (North American Islamic Trust) is reported to control over 50% off all mosques. It is a control that has been gained through Saudi money. In these mosques are installed imams propagating a truly nasty form of Islam, one that would have us all living under the strictures of Sharia.

Our peculiarly narrow attitude towards Islam is not entirely the fault of the Obama administration. It was also the general policy of the earlier Bush administration. But, Obama is the one who's now president. Also, he seems to be working far harder than Bush to confuse America's understanding of things Islamic.