By Cecilia Keehan

While the administration initiated policies to protect the country from terrorism, a professor from the American University of Cairo addressed The Morning Forum of Los Altos June 4 about the political and cultural role of the Muslim religion in the Middle East and its relationship to the West and the rest of the world.

Dr. Walid Kazziha, who in the summer also teaches at the University of Calgary, said that many people are puzzled by the fact that Islam has come to play an important political role and that its rise is happening in many places at the same time.

He explained that Islam provides ethical and moral principles and not political direction. Men and women making policies are sometimes guided by Islam, he said, but Islam does not provide a blueprint for political action or political strategy.

The rise of Islam today on the political and social level is being brought about by people living in contemporary life and deriving their moral and ethical values from Islam.

Kazziha, who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, said that during that time, he became more politicized and looked to other values such as nationalism while searching for social justice in the work of Fabian Socialists, and in Marx, Engels and Bettelheim.

From the 1970s until the present, Islamists have been trying to pick and choose a blueprint that would allow for social progress, survival and revival. This shift took place because of an orientation to the West and to their own indigenous culture. Exactly why and how it took place is difficult to explain, he said, and even think tanks around the world haven’t yet fully understood the phenomenon.

Kazziha said that the view of Orientalists and historians is typified by British Professor Bernard Lewis who claims that Islam assigns to man political duties as well as religious obligations. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising that Muslims draw on theology rather than on reason in taking political action.

Social scientists, on the other hand, tend to believe that the emergence of a political Islam is due to poverty. While that is true in places like Yemen, the Sudan, Algeria, Afghanistan and Egypt, the professor noted, it doesn’t explain its emergence in the affluent countries of Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Kazziha offered a historical perspective, reciting the conflicts between Islam and Christianity from the seventh century when Muslims came to the West, the Crusades in the 12th and 13th centuries, the revival of Islam in Turkey in the 15th century and the bloody encounter of the 19th century that continued over a long period involving Europeans.

There has been a history of cooperation between the groups as well. He said that the most poignant and moving literature on the birth of Christ is in the Koran.

What was happening in the Muslim world, Kazziha explained, was that religiosity was spreading across the Arab world in the 1960s and it cut across social classes as it gained momentum. Men and women were performing their duties as Muslims with varying degrees of devotion.

At present, there are four major elements in Islamic society and they are not mutually exclusive. On one side, he explained, are highly politicized Muslims, who see every act involving the individual or the collective to be a religious act which has to be sanctioned or condemned by the word of God. This represents a majority and is dangerous. Militants emerged and their goal is to shape society in the image of the early golden age of Islam. They believe that changing society should not be done by the elite alone, but by everyone. They view Jihad as a way of purification and a means of becoming better Muslims. The West is their main enemy and adherents are obligated to perform the Five Pillars of Islam that include the duty to pray five times a day, to make a pilgrimage and to tithe to the poor, he said.

Some Arab governments took backwards steps to absorb the growing wave of Islamic militant activists. They rallied the salaried class of clergyman who tried to project a conservative and passive image of Islam, hoping to diffuse the radical elements. But the militants were not fooled, he said.

In between, stand the moderate Muslim groups who believed in the peaceful transformation of society by preaching to the masses and appealing to their religious consciousness. This minority opted for compromise with both the establishment and the West.

Another group sees its duty as Muslims to get the nation united in one political world. It believes in the literal meanings of Islamic teaching and includes a selected number of clergy from former times to get their message out. They have a rigid ideological stance and view the West as an enemy.

Kazziha concluded his presentation by urging that the West take the responsibility to replace its shortsighted policies with policies that will have positive long-term effects in the Middle East. Palestine fuels not only the extremists, but everyone in the Middle East. A moral solution must be found so that both Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace, he said.