Islam Terrorism, and the Separation of Church and State

by Dr. Robert D. Crane

Collective Guilt in the Cause of Counter-Terrorism

The influential founder and editor of the National Review, William F. Buckley, J
r., has used his podium to defend the most extremist of all the barrage of recen
t hate attacks on Islam, namely, the scurrilous distortions by the Rev. Franklin
Graham. Graham contends that Islam is inherently a religion of violence, as de
monstrated by the alleged failure of its leaders adequately to condemn the terro
rist attack on Americas symbols of economic and military power on September 11, 2
001.

All the leading spokesmen of Islam throughout the world immediately and universa
lly condemned this terrorism This fact is now slowly being acknowledged as trut
h emerges from the fog of fiction that has been beclouding the truth.



None of these spokesmen have apologized for this act of terrorism, because it so
obviously has nothing to do with the teachings of Islam and because Muslim spok
espersons therefore have no reason to apologize for anything. The Holy Father
in Rome has apologized for the Crusades only because the head of the Roman Catho
lic Church instigated them, whereas the instigators of 9/11 were renegades from
the Islamic faith. The universal prohibition of collective guilt, accepted by a
ll moral theologians, precludes apologies by those who are not guilty of 9/11, j
ust as it precludes the collective demonization of innocent Israeli and American
civilians by such as Osama bin Laden.

Buckleys New Twist in an Old Crusade

Buckleys attack on Islam is significant because it introduces a new twist in the
demonization of Islam, one that most Muslims can not even understand, much less
refute, because it is so off the wall. In the August 23rd, 2002, issue of The W
ashington Times, the following quote of Buckley is reported approvingly:

The charges by the Rev. Franklin Graham are not only justified, they are unanswe
rable. It is Dr. Grahams point that if we assume, for the sake of ecumenical bon
homie, that the terrorists were not really representing Islam, that they were ex
tremists torturing the word of the Prophet, okay, then that is exactly what we s
hould be told by men of Islam in authority. And that should be easy to do, inas
much as the high priests of the Islamic world are also its secular leaders. The
Muslim religion does not condone the separation of church and state.

The concept of a wall separating Church from State was introduced by Thomas Jeffer
son in a private letter in the context of his support for freedom of religion.
The American doctrine of freedom of religion was encapsulated in the First Amend
ment to the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution was designed to spell out the m
echanics of governance in order to protect against both elitism and mob rule by
the demos or people. The first ten amendments to this Constitution, adopted two
years later in 1791, were designed to spell out the substantive principles of t
he Declaration of Independence, which lay the foundation for the Great American
Experiment in self-determination and self-government.

The very first amendment, and therefore the most important one, commenced with t
he words: Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Jefferson reflected the most basic teachings of Islamic law, the maqasid or univ
ersal principles of the shariah, when he taught that building a wall between Churc
h and State refers to preventing an organized clergy or state religion from gaini
ng political control of a society, because this is the greatest threat, other th
an anarchy, to freedom of religion, especially to freedom of religion in public
life.

Buckley has led the strict constructionists in interpreting this Jeffersonian phra
se to mean three things: 1) the citizens in a republic can maintain freedom for
religion in public life only by avoiding the establishment of a single religion,
2) protecting freedom of religion is the only way to assure that the wisdom of
divine revelation and natural law can inform the public square, and 3) without t
his religiously based wisdom, no republic of free people can long survive.

The principal attack on Jefferson when he ran for the U.S. presidency in 1802 wa
s that he was not a Christian, because he did not support the doctrine of the tr
inity and therefore was an atheist. In fact, he was perhaps the spiritually most
profound president America ever had, other than George Washington, who was a mys
tic and nowadays might be condemned by the Wahhabi sect as a Sufi.

Since the time of the American Civil War a century and a half ago, there have be
en secular humanists who assert the primacy or even the sole authority of irreli
gion in public life. They have sought to preclude from public life the wisdom o
f divine revelation through prophets (of whatever religion) and of divine guidan
ce through natural law. The equivalent of such secular humanists has existed th
roughout Muslim history in the form of tyrants who assert that their secular rul
e precludes freedom of religion in public life. For William Buckley to base his
understanding of Islam on these renegades against it verges on the oxymoronic.


The Islamic Jihad Against Extremism

The issue in Islam has concerned not merely the authority of individual governme
nts but of the Caliphate (Khilafat) or head of the Muslim world. Extremist Muslim
s since the time of the second Ummayed ruler, Yazid, have claimed that the head
of the empire automatically is the head of Islam and therefore the ruler of all
Muslims and even of the entire world. The Hizb al Tahrir say the same thing tod
ay in their call for a common jihad against all infidels and in their demand tha
t Muslims oppose all governments, especially the American government, until the
institution of the global Caliphate again governs a new world order.


A couple of years ago, I hosted a two-hour question and answer session on the wo
rld-wide Al Jazira TV with an audience of 70,000,000. When I promised to answer
all questions, both in English and Arabic, I was peppered with questions about
the Khilafat by professional ideologues in this world-wide Hizb al Tahrir moveme
nt. They are less scary that Osama bin Laden only because they have not yet end
orsed violence. No doubt, they have not been targeted yet by the religious righ
t in America because they oppose the Wahhabis, even though the Khilafat movement
is made to order for Osama bin Laden and is moving in his direction.


It is sheer ignorance for Buckley or anyone else to use the separation of church
and state argument against Islam by contending that the authority to issue declar
ations of right and wrong and to condemn suicide and terrorism rests with the he
ads of state, not with the religious scholars. One of the most basic principles
of the maqasid al shariah is the maqsud known as the duty to respect freedom for
self-determination, especially in the sense of political freedom. One of the f
our sub-principles or hajjiyat is the required independence of the judiciary as
the sole authority responsible for interpreting Islamic law and declaring what i
s right and what is wrong.

In my view, even Imam Khomeinis waliyat al faqih, contrary to most interpretation
s, did not violate the dual principles that the religious authorities must be in
dependent of the government and that the government has no authority in religiou
s matters. The practice of government, as in most Muslim countries, often refle
cts the teachings of Islam in the breech, but this does not change the basic pri
nciples of Islamic law spelled out consistently over the centuries by the univer
sally recognized Islamic scholars.
This issue of authority in Islam is addressed in my essay, Religious Extremism: M
uslim Challenge and Islamic Response, as well as in my monograph, Projecting a Co
mmon Vision for America,both of which are on the web-site of the Center for Unde
rstanding Islam, www.cuii.org. A second edition of my book, Shaping the Future:
Challenge and Response, which gives much more detail, is scheduled to be publis
hed and put on this web-site soon. This essay, which was the first item to be p
ut on the CUI web-site shortly after it was organized in response to 9/11, state
s the following:

Extremism comes especially when people substitute a political institution for th
emselves as the highest instrument and agent of God in the world, when they call
for the return of the Caliphate in its imperial form embodied in the Ottoman di
spensation. It comes when they call for what Shah Wali Allah of India in the 18
th century called the khilafat dhahira or external and exoteric caliphate in pla
ce of the khilafat batina or esoteric caliphate formed by the spiritual heirs of
the prophets, who are the sages, saints, and righteous scholars.

In the late Abbasad period of classical Islam, the political scientists of the d
ay, in the words of the brilliant modern scholar, Naveed Sheikh in his new book,
The New Politics of Islam,delegitimized both institutional exclusivism and, crit
ically, centralization of political power by disallowing the theophanic descent
of celestial sovereignty into any human institution. The Abbasid scholars, faced
with a gradual process of creeping despotism, denied the divine right not only
of kings, but of every human institution, and they condemned the worship of powe
r and privilege that had brought corruption upon the earth.

The Hanbali scholar, Ibn Taymiya, completed the process of deconstructing the on
tological fatalism of caliphatic thought by restricting the role of the caliphat
e to what Abu Hamid al Ghazali had called an ummatic umbrella functioning only t
o protect the functional integrity of Islamic law rather than to govern politica
lly. Ibn Taymiya asserted that the unity of the Muslim community depends not on
any symbolism represented by the Caliph, much less on any caliphal political au
thority, but on confessional solidarity of each autonomous entity within an Islam
ic whole. In other words, the Muslim umma or global community is a body of purpo
se based on worship of God. By contending that the monopoly of coercion that re
sides in political governance is not philosophically constituted, Ibn Taymiya re
ndered political unification and the caliphate redundant.


The Islamic Martyrs for Freedom of Religion

The surest proof that political governance has no role in religious life other t
han to guarantee freedom of worship, and that the head of state has no authority
to speak on behalf of Islam or any religion, is the fact that all the great sch
olars of Islam were imprisoned for teaching this. The long history of political
oppression against religious scholars in Muslim history speaks not only to the
admitted corruption in many Muslim societies, but to the importance and permanen
ce of religious and judicial independence.

When William F. Buckley asserts that the high priests of the Islamic world are it
s secular leaders, he is supporting the sycophants and political prostitutes who
deigned to give fatwas to this effect, and he is committing sacrilege against th
e martyrs of every century who suffered and died in the unending battle to comba
t this heresy.

The best account of the battle by all the great scholars against political presu
mption of religious authority is in Professor Khalid Muhammad Abou el Fadls new b
ook, The Conference of the Books: The Search for Beauty in Islam, University Pre
ss, 20021, 419 pages, beginning on page 327. He writes:


Our civilization was built on the suffering of the martyrs of the word. I see th
e footsteps of the scholar of hadith, al Bukhari (d. 256/870), who was accused o
f being a Rationalist and was expelled and exiled until he died a ward of his re
latives without a home or money. I see the footsteps of the great Maliki jurist
and judge, Ibn al Arabi (d. 543/1148), who was dismissed, imprisoned, and exiled
, and who withstood his torment with remarkable bravery. I walk in the footstep
s of Ibn al Qayyum (d. 751/1350), and his teacher Ibn Taymiya (d. 728/1328), who
were both tortured and imprisoned for their insistence on honoring the integrit
y of the word. Ibn Taymiya, in particular, lived and died a martyr of the word.
He was imprisoned and exiled from Egypt and Syria because of his writings, and
, after issuing a fatwa that offended those in power, he was left to die in pris
on.

Professor Abou el Fadl continues for several pages detailing the sufferings of a
ll the famous scholars, including Ibn Rushd, al Harrasi, al Nisai, al Tabari, al
Suyuti, al Nawawi, Ibn Kathir, al Subki, Ibn Aqil, and some with whom most Muslim
s are not familiar any more, for defending the integrity of truth and justice.
These two core principles are the two major teachings of divine revelation and t
he two major pillars of Islam. This truism is reflected in the Quranic ayah:

Wa tamaat kalimatu Rabbika sidqan wa adlan.

And the Word of your Lord is perfected in truth and in justice.

The battle of the jihad al kabir, the intellectual jihad, which is the only jiha
d mentioned in the Quran, should be the focus of the fard al kifaya or collective
responsibility of the Muslim umma in the current century, along with the Jihad
al Akbar or greatest jihad by which everyone should seek to perfect oneself. T
his is the only way to reduce or eliminate the need for the Jihad al Saghir or l
esser jihad calling for the use of force to defend human rights wherever they ar
e violated, because it is the only way to transform societies so that they can b
e led by persons who are led by God.

This balance among the three jihads and among the guiding principles of order, j
ustice, and liberty was the essence of both classical Islamic and classical Amer
ican thought, and should provide the basis for American leadership during the ce
nturies ahead