The Tarek Fatah column: Secular Muslims are canaries in mine that can smell the poison, but is anyone listening?

by Tarek Fatah There is rising anger around the world against Islamic terrorism, yet most Muslims categorise this anger as unnecessary fear mongering. Instead they say, Muslims are becoming victims of so-called Islamophobia. One would have hoped that after the latest Islamic terror attack in America by the husband-wife team of Syed Rizwan Farook and Pakistan-born Tashfeen Malik, US Islamic organisations would recognize it was time to condemn ‘jihad’ itself and to stop playing victim. However, that was too much to ask for. [caption id=“attachment_2214216” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image[/caption] Within days of the IS-inspired jihadi massacre, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) along with other American Islamist organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) got together under the umbrella of the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) that hosted a National Muslim Leadership Summit on Sunday, 20 December, in Washington, DC area. ICNA is a conservative Islamist group that was formed in 1968 by Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi followers of the Jamaat-e-Islami in North America. Their stated goal is “to seek the pleasure of Allah … [for the] establishment of the Islamic system of life [in America] as spelled out in the Qur’an and the Sunnah (sayings) of Muhammad.“ [1] Elsewhere, ICNA states in its members’ handbook, “Wherever the Islamic movement succeeds to establish true Islamic society, they will form coalition and alliances. This will lead to the unity of the Ummah (Muslim nation) and towards the establishment of the Khilafah (the Caliphate).” [2] Predictably ICNA and CAIR did not invite any secular or liberal Muslim American groups who are critical of the doctrine of armed jihad and Islamic sharia as source of public law. Reacting to the formation of this new alliance of Islamists in America, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, an ex-US Navy officer who founded and heads the American Islamic Forum for Democracy told Fox News: “CAIR may condemn the acts and means of radical violent Islamists, but no one should be fooled for a moment that CAIR’s singular fixation on stoking the flames and raising funds off the exaggerated narrative that Muslims are under siege by ‘bigoted Americans’ … They are feeding the global movement against America.” He was right. After the two-day session, the coalition did not renounce the doctrine of ‘armed jihad’ that feeds Islamic terrorism nor did it call for taking politics out of American mosques. Instead USCMO flexed its electoral muscle, deciding to conduct “a drive to register one million voters prior to the 2016 presidential election”. There was no word about cleansing the American Muslim house of all jihadi literature. Not one word against the Jamaat-e-Islami or the Muslim Brotherhood that provide the intellectual sustenance to not just ICNA and CAIR, but also the jihadi terrorist groups like IS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabab. LeT, and Boko Haram. The problem is that the Islamist victimhood agenda works very well among guilt-ridden liberal Americans or naïve members of the Inter-faith industry who are quick to buy into the false propaganda of Islamophobia. Frustrated by the hoodwinking of America by Islamists, two Muslim women took to the Washington Post to protest this bizarre infatuation US liberals have developed towards the symbols of Islamism. Indian-born Asra Nomani and Egyptian-born Hala Arafa wrote: “Americans are getting duped by the agenda of Muslims who argue that a woman’s honor lies in her “chastity” and unwittingly pushing a platform to put a hijab on every woman. Please do this instead: Do not wear a headscarf in “solidarity” with the ideology that most silences us, equating our bodies with “honor.” Stand with us instead with moral courage against the ideology of Islamism that demands we cover our hair.” [3] Instead of paying heed to these two brave Muslim American women, they were widely rebuked by the leadership of Islamic organisations in America. The situation of Muslims in America is in many ways similar to that of Muslims in India. The leadership is in the hands of the clerics of the mosques while the secular liberal Muslim has little access to the mainstream media that sees only bearded and hijabi Muslims as authentic voices of Islam. Some of us secular Muslims are the canaries in the mine that can smell the dangerous poison that could destroy society, but is anyone listening to the voices of reason from secular and liberal North American or Indian Muslims?