by Mark Durie

A response to Current Issues Brief 7 2001-2:

"Mutual misperceptions: the historical context of Muslim-Western Relations" by Gary Brown.

This Brief is available over the internet at: http://www/aph.gov.au/library/pubs/cib/2001-02/02cib07.htm

Principal points are:

. Brown's contention that Islam is a religion of 'remarkable religious tolerance' is based on a naive and selective view of history. The manner in which he presents this picture of tolerance is biased in its use of language. He is representative of a Western view of Islamic past which effectively denies the testimony of the peoples defeated and subjugated by Islam.

. His paper has numerous historical inaccuracies and exaggerations.

. There is a failure to offer any analysis or even reference to the key Islamic doctrine of jihad, which has consistently regulated warfare and conquest throughout the history of Islam. More generally, his implicit contention that a critical examination of Islamic theology can throw no light on the contemporary phenomenon of terrorism is mistaken, and denies the terrorists' own religious convictions.

. Brown fails to make the crucial distinction between critiquing a religion' s beliefs, and condemning the adherents of a religion, assuming that anyone who does the former must be guilty of the latter.

. Christianity is mistakenly equated with Western society and the interface between Christianity and Islam is correspondingly misrepresented.

. Brown overlooks the character of contemporary Muslim-Christian relations within Muslim countries.

. Brown ignores the rise of Islamism as a world-wide phenomenon, and the influence of Islamic teachers in this movement.

About the author:

Mark Durie holds a PhD in Linguistics from the ANU (1984). He is an expert on the language and culture of the Acehnese, a Muslim people of Indonesia, amongst whom he conducted extensive field research trips during the period from 1980-1991, and about whom he has published three books and many articles.

A former Harkness Fellow and member of the Council of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, Mark was visiting researcher at the University of Leiden, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz and Stanford University, before commencing a career in linguistics at the University of Melbourne in 1987. There he was Head of the Department of Linguistics and Language Studies at the University of Melbourne from 1990-1992, and ARC Senior Research fellow from 1992-1997.

Whilst now working as an Anglican minister at St Hilary's Anglican Church Kew, Mark remains a Senior Associate of the Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne, with the title of Associate Professor.

'Tolerance'

One of the most confusing issues at present is how to judge Islam. Is it tolerant, or intolerant. Is it a religion or war, or of peace? Which voices should we believe?

In his Department of Foreign Affairs briefing paper 'Mutual misperceptions: the historical context of Muslim-Western Relations', Brown adopts what Bat Ye'or, speaking of the Western Islamologist tradition, describes as 'a static conception of history. During thirteen centuries and on three continents the dhimmi peoples [Jews and Christians under Islam] are presented as having uniformly and indefinitely enjoyed a status of benevolent tolerance'.

Brown's positive valuation of Islam is reflected in such phrases as 'one of the most brilliant and tolerant [societies] ever', 'the tolerant Arabs', 'remarkable religious tolerance', 'the Muslim policy of tolerance'. He is aware of cases of intolerance, but consistently minimizes them.

. 'Most conversions to Islam were unforced.'

. The devshirme 'child tribute' was a 'unique' practice.

. The offence that the devshirme caused is 'historical baggage'

. The destruction of Buddhist statues by the Taliban took place on 'alleged' religious grounds.

. 'Taliban intolerance contradicts Islam's historically great tolerance of other beliefs'.

. That the Taliban require Hindus to wear distinctive clothing is 'most unfortunate' because it implies ill intentions that the Taliban do not hold.

. The reporting in the West of human rights abuses which occur in conformity to Islamic law (e.g. use of mutilation in punishment for theft) is driven by the Western media appetite for 'bad news' which 'offend popular sensibilities'.

. The so-called 'puritanical' variety of Islam found in Saudi Arabia is a 'sect'.

. Muslims who commit atrocities in the name of jihad are comparable to Adolf Hitler when he claimed to be 'fighting for the work of the Lord'.

Although Brown mentions sectarian persecution of Shiites by Sunni Mulsims, he does not consider this to be a problem for his principle of tolerance.

In judging Islam to be tolerant, Brown ignores present-day limitations on human rights in Muslim nations, a pattern which is well documented by Amnesty International and other international human rights organizations. These realities are apparently irrelevant to the question of whether Islam produces 'tolerant' societies.

Conversely, Brown applies the reverse techniques to emphasise Christian or Western intolerance. Phrases used include:

. 'Christian aggression'

. 'barbarous Western Europe' and 'the barbarian kingdoms of Western Europe'

. 'the religious oppression of the Byzantine government'

. 'military threats from Christendom', 'European militancy'

. 'economic exploitation and an imposed foreign rule' (by the West)

. 'the oppressiveness of western colonial rule'

. 'the inescapable fact that western powers seized their colonies by dint of superior force'

. 'a natural and well-founded apprehension . that Christian aggression would soon follow'

. 'The Crusaders . lorded it over subject Muslim populations'

Brown apparently regards Arab Muslim colonization as something inevitable and beneficial, for he writes: 'When Islam arose it found the west and Christianity already there; it had to establish itself [my emphasis] as a new force in the face of bitter resistance.' This is like saying 'When the British empire arose it found the rest of the world already there; it had to establish itself.'. These words mask the aggressive subjugation of brilliant civilizations by an expansionist power, a process which permanently obliterated vibrant languages and cultures. In contrast Brown describes European colonial domination of Muslim countries using language laden with negative value judgements.

Ambiguities inherent in the concept of tolerance when applied to Islam

There are four types of ambiguity in the concept of tolerance which make it a problematic criterion for evaluating the history of Islam.

i) Tolerance in the context of inequality. In the multi-cultural, pluralistic society which is Australia, the term 'tolerant' has comes to refer to something like 'accepting of difference', or 'allowing freedom of belief'. We apply this term to situations where groups which are seen as fundamentally equal in legitimacy coexist together.

Yet this is a recent development in the meaning of 'tolerance', which was originally applied to a situation of inequality where one party is regarded as deficient or negative in some way and the other party condones or endures this. Something must be thought bad before it can be 'tolerated'. Good things are not tolerated, they are appreciated.

The greater the perceived deficit, the more disparaging a valuation of 'tolerance'. For example, in a concentration camp, it could have sinister overtones if guards were claimed to be 'tolerant' towards prisoners. To say such a thing is to accept that there is something wrong with the prisoners and they deserve worse than they receive. In contexts of conquest, where relationships are by definition opposed, the whole concept of tolerance becomes inapplicable.

With reference to Islam, with its history of conquest by jihad, claimed 'tolerance' towards subjugated peoples cannot have the same meaning as in a multi-cultural society. Classical Islam teaches that Christianity and Judaism are corrupt forms of its own faith, their adherents are retrograde and worthy targets of conquest, when conquered they are to be subjected to discrimination under shari'ah law (see below), and there is a most fundamental division between the people of Islam - the Umma - and non-Muslims. Under such circumstances, 'tolerance' cannot mean the same thing as in contemporary Australian society. This is the first ambiguity inherent in the concept of 'tolerance'.

ii) Theory vs practice. The second ambiguity is inherent in the difference between theory and application. When we call a religion 'tolerant', are we speaking of the theory or the lived reality? At the present time we are hearing people proving that Islam is tolerant on the grounds of the Koranic injunction: "There is no compulsion in Islam". But such a principle remains untested without the evidence of history.

iii) Variations in time and space. Then there is the vastness of history. Islam's interactions with its subject peoples and enemies have taken place across thousands of miles and thirteen centuries. At any one time, 'tolerance' can be observed in one place and 'intolerance' in another. For example when the Turkish sultan was accepting Jewish refugees into Anatolia from the Spanish Inquisition, a region which had been previously been depopulated, the same regime was executing the inhumane devshirme in the Balkans (see below), and in due course these Jewish communities would become refugees again.

iv) Community relationships are multidimensional. Finally there is the need to differentiate between dimensions of relationships between communities. A Christian or Jewish subject community could be shown tolerance with regard to its doctrinal formulations, but intolerance in regard to its basic rights under law, tolerance in its maintenance of old places of worship, but intolerance in its rights to build new ones, and so forth. .

For these four reasons, 'tolerance' is a highly problematic concept to apply as value judgement to the whole of Islamic history.

On historical inaccuracies and omissions

Two fundamental inaccuracies in Brown's paper are the glossing over of:

. the violence of jihad and . the ensuing status of the 'peoples of the Book' under Islam.

The violence and destructiveness of Muslim expansion:

. During the first Muslim incursions into Palestine in 634, contemporary reports speak of destruction of churches and monasteries, sacked towns, fields laid waste, villages burned down, and the 'savage and barbarous sword ' of the Saracen. Four thousand Jewish, Christian and Samaritan peasants who defended their lands were massacred. Thousands perished in 639, victims of famine and plague that resulted from these destructions. Such devastations Brown summarizes as follows: 'Muslim Arab raids . met only disorganized resistance'.

. From the earliest periods of Islamic conquest there are numerous examples of whole towns being massacred or enslaved, included Aleppo, Antioch, Ctsesiphon, Euchaita, Constantia, Pathos (Cyprus), Pergamum, Sadres, Samosata, Amorium.

. Brown cites Egypt as an example of a region which 'welcomed' the 'more tolerant' Arabs as liberators. Certainly, resentment against the Byzantines aided Muslim expansion. But whilst this may have made the Mediterranean 'easy pickings', it did not exempt the conquered regions from economic devastation, massacres and mass enslavement. A chronicle written between 693 and 700 by the Coptic Bishop John of Nikiou describes this process of 'welcome' in detail:

"Then the Muslims arrived in Nikiou. There was not one single soldier to resist them. They seized the town and slaughtered everyone they met in the street and in the churches - men, women and children, sparing nobody. Then they went to other places, pillaged and killed all the inhabitants they found. . But let us now say no more, for it is impossible to describe the horrors the Muslims committed when they occupied the island of Nikious, on Sunday, the eighteenth day of the month of Guenbot, in the fifteenth year of the lunar cycle, as well as the terrible scenes which took place in Caesarea in Palestine. (p.243-44)

"The patriarch Cyrus felt deep grief at the calamities in Egypt, because Amir, who was of barbarian origin, showed no mercy in his treatment of the Egyptians, and did not fulfil the covenants which had been agreed with him (pp.244-55).

"After taking possession of Alexandria, [Amir] . raised the tax to as much as twenty-two batr of gold, with the result that the inhabitants, crushed down by the burden and in no position to pay it, went into hiding. (p.261).

"But it is impossible to describe the lamentable position of the inhabitants of this town, who came to the point of offering their children in exchange for the enormous sums that they had to pay each month, finding no one to help them because God had abandoned them and had delivered the Christians into the hands of their enemies." (p.262-66)

History records that after the Egyptians rebelled against the tributes imposed by the Arabs, a subsequent campaign was launched, and the tribute tripled.

. Further west, Tripoli was ransacked in 643, and Carthage entirely razed to the ground and most of its inhabitants killed. The Arabs devastated the Magreb, and it took more than a century to crush ensuing Berber resistance. Ibn Kaldun (1332-1406) wrote of Idris I (789-93) in his History of the Berbers: '[Idris I], having arrived in the Maghreb, caused the last traces of the religions [Christian, Jewish and pagan] to disappear and put an end to the independence of these tribes [Judeo-Berber].'

. Enforced conversions were not exceptional as Brown claims - they were the norm. The whole concept of 'no compulsion' is meaningless under jihad conditions. An enduring practice was to enslave populations taken from outside the boundaries of the Muslim shari'ah. Inevitably fresh non-Mulsim slaves or their children were Islamized within a generation, their ethnic and linguistic origins erased. Two important mechanisms for this conversion were concubinage and the slave militias.

Such mechanisms of enforced conversion are still at work in the Sudan today, as United nations reports on human rights abuses in the Sudan have shown.

The full litany of massacres, exiles, enforced conversions, and enslavement of hundreds of thousands by Muslim forces makes for sober reading.

These were, of course, common practices of warfare in this era. What made Muslim warfare different was the doctrinal formulations of jihad and the doctrinally mandated subjection that jihad imposed upon conquered populations. These formulations, discussed below, ensured a consistency and an intentionality for the whole pattern of Muslim colonization over many centuries.

The lot and the contribution of the booty peoples after conquest

The historical sources are full of detailed descriptions of humiliation and oppression meted out to those populations who submitted to Islam by means of a treaty. These subject peoples were known as dhimmis 'treaty peoples':

. Brown describes the head tax (jizya) which dhimmis had to pay as 'small'. However all the evidence indicates that this tax, intended for the benefit of Muslims only, was a huge burden, even to the point where Christians and Jews had to enslave themselves or their family to pay it, or else convert and become a recipient of its bounty.

. Al-Mawardi, 11th century jurist and theologian, interpreted one of the sayings of Muhammad to mean that the head-tax on dhimmis was either a sign of contempt, because of their unbelief, or a sign of the mildness of Muslims, who granted the dhimmis quarter (instead of killing or enslaving them): humble gratitude was the intended response.

. In the broad sweep of Islamic history, the obligatory tribute of one in five children, the devshirme, taken by the Turks from the dhimmi peoples of the Balkans was by no means 'unique' as Brown claims. The practice of taking dhimmi children did not stop in Turkey in the 17th century with the formal abolition of the devshirme: as late as the mid-19th century, thousands of Armenian children aged between 8 and 15 were ordered on an annual basis by the Ottoman Sultan to surrender and were taken to work in the Sultan's factories. Moreover the confiscation of dhimmi children was endemic throughout Muslim countries: in Yemen Jewish orphans were legally required to be handed over to the Muslim community up until the Yemeni Jewish community emigrated to Israel after WWII.

. Brown also omits mention of the profoundly significant principle of Islamic law that dhimmi testimony is not valid against a Muslim. This principle applied throughout the whole Islamic world in one form or another before the colonial period and it continues to influence legal processes in many Islam countries today. If a Muslim accused a Christian of a capital offence, such as trying to convert a Muslim, the Christian's own testimony was not valid. This inequality in law made Christians and Jews extremely vulnerable. It also entrenched a principle which remains significant in the international sphere to this day, that non-Muslim versions of events are regarded as suspect and mendacious.

. Under Islam any Muslim who converts to Christianity or Judaism is subject to the death penalty. A Muslim man may marry a Christian or Jewish woman, but their children become Muslims under law. Conversely, it is forbidden for a Muslim woman to marry a Christian or Jewish man. Such principles set strict limits to Muslim 'tolerance'.

. Brown includes in his paper a copy of a 'Treaty' supposedly granted by Muhammad to the monastery of St Catherine of Mt Sinai in 628. This is almost certainly a later forgery designed to protect the monastery from attacks. Its wording and legal conditions are reminiscent of later Islamic legal conditions, rather than the early period of the life of Muhammad himself. This is typical of many such treaties, real or concocted, which dhimmi communities kept in self-defence.

. It is a feature of the enforced anonymity of the booty peoples that their vital historical contribution to the dominant culture is ignored. We are supposed to believe that Islam 'saved' Greek learning from oblivion by having the classical texts translated into Arabic. This belies that fact the conquered regions already hosted highly cultivated cultures. It was the subjugated peoples who brought learning, science and culture into Islam, not the nomadic Arabs. Egypt had been a famous centre of Greek learning for centuries before it was Islamized. Without Arabic conquest, nothing would have needed saving.

. Brown holds up Moorish Spain as a showcase of Muslim brilliance and tolerance. Of society in Muslim Spain, Brown writes that it was 'one of the most brilliant and tolerant ever: Muslims, Christians and Jews intermingled, exchanging not just goods and services, but ideas.'. In the 11th-12th centuries the Almoravid and Almohad persecutions eliminated Christianity in Spain, by massacres, enforced conversions, and deportations to North Africa. At Granada in 1066 the whole Jewish community, numbering about 3,000, was massacred after a long period during which the vizier of the city had been a Jew. Jews were subjected to enforced conversions, and then to confiscation of their children since their conversion was regarded as suspect. It in was in the face of such persecutions that Christian and Jewish scholars fled into Europe, bringing their scholarship to the Christian West as refugees from Islam.

Here are some Muslim voices from this period:

'The Qadi, Ahmad b. Talib, [9th century] compelled the dhimmis [Jews & Christians] to wear upon their shoulder a patch of white cloth that bore the image of an ape [for the Jews] and a pig [for the Christians], and to nail onto their doors a board bearing the sign of a monkey [cf. Koran 5:65].' (Al-Maliki, an 11th century Tunisian historian.)

'A distinctive sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace. It is forbidden to sell to Jews and Christians scientific books unless they treat of their particular law; actually they translate scientific books and attribute them to their coreligionists and to their bishops, whereas they are really the work of Muslims.' (Ibn Ardun, d. 1134. Andalusian author of an authoritative legal treatise on Seville).

'Toward the end of his reign, Abu Yusuf [1184-98, ruler of Spain and North Africa] ordered the Jewish population [who had been forcibly converted] to make themselves conspicuous among the rest of the population by assuming a special attire consisting of dark blue garments [with other stipulations]. Abu Yusuf's misgivings as to the sincerity of their conversion to Islam prompted him to take this measure and impose upon them a specific dress. "If I were sure", said he, "that they had really become Muslims, I would let them assimilate through marriage and other means; but if I was sure that they had remained infidels, I would have the men killed, enslave their children and would confiscate their belongings for the benefit of the believers."' (1224, Al-Marrakushi, North African historian of the Almohads).

Distinctions between Muslims

Brown claims that 'Muhammad made no social, racial or economic distinctions among his followers.' As a theological judgement about human destiny before Allah this may be true, but in social and economic terms it is not. Muhammad condoned and participated in concubinage alongside marriage. Slavery was also widely practised from the earliest days of Islam, with extensive legal judgements regulating its practice, and linking the institution of slavery with jihad practices.

Muhammad also instituted what has proved to be an enduring principle of discrimination between Arabs and non-Arabs: Arabs and Arabia were required to be Muslim. Only non-Arabs could be awarded a dhimmi treaty. Muhammad's reported deathbed wish was 'Two religions should not coexist within the Arabian peninsula'. This policy was implemented in Muhammad's life-time and has been enshrined in laws regulating the jihad:

"Arab territory differs from non-Arab territory in that one fights Arabs only to oblige them to embrace Islam without making them pay the poll tax (i.e. become dhimmis): nothing but their conversion is acceptable. The decision in respect of non-Arabs is different because they are fought not only to convert them but also to oblige them to pay the poll tax, whereas only the first of these objectives applies to the Arabs since they must either convert or be put to death." (Abu Yusuf - 731-98, a renowned jurist of the Hanafi school of law).

It is precisely because of this religious principle that radicals like Osama Bin Laden resent the presence of American troops on Saudi soil.

V.S. Naipaul argues in Beyond Belief that a fundamental Arabo-centrism pervades all Islamic societies: the holy places are all in Arabic speaking lands, only Arabic is the holy language, and converted populations have the tendency to invent Arab ancestry for themselves. Alongside this, he argues, is a disdain of indigenous culture.

The Byzantine attitude to papal claims

Brown also includes the testimony of a Byzantine patriarch, that he would prefer Muslim domination to submitting to Rome. Brown cites this as evidence of Muslim tolerance. This is a rhetorical statement which must be read in its proper context, which included a protracted and bitter struggle by Byzantium to resist Muslim conquest. Certainly under Islam a Patriarch would not be subject to theological interference from the Muslims on points of Christian doctrine, but this statement is hardly a blanket endorsement of Muslim tolerance.

The 'exceptional' character of the Taliban

When Brown claims that Taliban intolerance 'contradicts Islam's historically great tolerance of other beliefs', this is mistaken. The Taliban have been taking pains to implement the legal requirements of conservative Muslim law. This has included the destruction of the lucrative opium trade. The requirement that Hindus wear distinctive clothing, which Brown cites, was a fact of everyday dhimmi life in all Muslim societies before the nineteenth century.

The effects of Western colonialism

Brown's claim that the ascendancy of Europe, including colonization, had 'disastrous consequences for most Islamic societies', is simplistic in the extreme. The consequences of colonization were mixed. Most notably, European hegemony saw the substantial elimination of the slave trade which had been an enduring institution throughout the Islamic world. Moreover Brown's phrase 'Islamic societies' obscures the plight of the treaty peoples of Islam, whose condition everywhere also improved in the colonial period. The elaborate humiliations and deprivations of dhimmis, which had been enshrined in law, were rolled back as their history began to emerge into the light of day.

The reasons for the defeat of Arab states in the war of 1948.

Brown claims that the defeat of Muslim states by Israel in 1948 was because the main Western powers had backed the Jewish State against them. Rather it was the case that the British forces had decamped ignominiously from Palestine, and Britain's attitude to Israel at the time was far from supportive. Formal Western military support became important later in the history of modern Israel.

The importance of theology

Both Christianity and Islam are religions of revealed religion. The holy books - the deposits of revelation - have a continuously reforming influence upon behaviour of whole populations.

On the one hand, Brown does not refrain from identifying what he regards as Christian intolerance to its doctrinal base: 'Christianity, with its claim to universal truth, was not about to tolerate Islam as a faith with which it could share the worship of the one God'. Brown also attributes what he regards as benevolent features of Islam to its doctrine: 'the core of Islamic belief always required tolerance for the 'people of the book'.

On the other hand, Brown inconsistently refuses to countenance any theologically-based negative judgement of Islam, or even a systematic engagement with its doctrinal system. He refuses to examine the institution of jihad, which has regulated warfare and conquest throughout the history of Islam. Nor does he examine the institution of dhimmitude - the legal doctrines which regulate the treatment of the 'treaty peoples'. More generally, his insistence that a critical examination of Islamic theology can throw no light on the contemporary phenomenon of violent Muslim resistance is wrong-headed, and denies the plain testimony of the Islamic radicals themselves. This is head-in-the-sand thinking.

It is important to state here the outlines of the doctrine of jihad, because of its importance in regulating Muslim-Christian relations over the centuries. It remains of the utmost importance today.

The renowned historian and jurist, Ibn Kaldun, taught: "In the Muslim community, jihad is a religious duty because of the universalism of the Muslim mission, and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force." He goes on to explain that the offices of religion and politics are united in Islam for this reason: to ensure the success of the jihad.

Jihad means 'struggle', and it is required for all Muslims. There are two aspects of jihad: internal and external. The internal struggle, which moderate Muslims emphasize, is the struggle within oneself to follow Islam.

The external struggle involves taking up arms to expand the borders of Islamic jurisdiction, and also to defend the community of Islam against outside attack.

The institution of jihad divides the world into two domains. In the Dar al-Islam or region of Islam, peace reigns in the form of Islamic law. The Dar al-Harb, or region of war, is the zone where Islamic society does not prevail. Here all those who do not submit to Islam are to be found.

Over the past two centuries alternative legal opinions have emerged to moderate this distinction, as some Muslims have retheologized their experience of living under secularist governments. However the classical conception of a divided world remains normative in Islam theology: it was this theology which drove and guided the expansion of Islam, it remains the root in reference to which any alternative doctrines must be defined, and it is the accepted doctrine of radical Islam today.

The conditions which trigger jihad are also important to explore. Islamic law teaches that Muslims are a single community - the Umma. Any non-Muslim alliance who fights against Muslims is regarded as an enemy of Islam.

From a conservative doctrinal point of view, it is impossible for a non-Muslim force to wage war on a Muslim community without this being of religious significance, an assault on Islam. Al-Mawardi, a key legislator of the 11th century, wrote "When allies and their tributaries unite in order to combat the Muslims, they immediately fall into the category of enemies and each of these combatants can be put to death." This duty applies to all Muslims. Specifically included in the category of enemies are those who give their approval to the hostilities.

This is why Osama bin Laden regarded the September 11 bombings as a legitimate act of jihad. According to Bin Laden, American people, as supporters of their government, are culpable for the alleged acts of war perpetrated by the US against Muslims, such as the economic blockade against Iraq.

This is one of the most volatile things about the current military actions against the Taliban: radical Islam demands that Muslims regard any attacks on Muslims as an assault on the religion. Infidels have no right to wage war on Islamic peoples, under any circumstances.

In censuring theological reflection, Brown fails to make the crucial distinction between critiquing a religion's beliefs, and condemning the adherents of a religion. He implies that any theological critique that takes doctrines seriously enough to attribute atrocious consequences to them must come from someone 'ruled by hate, prejudice or secular ambition'. This is bigotry. It is like saying that we must never attribute the destructive effects of Communism to its ideology. Yet, as we have seen, Brown himself feels free to attribute Christian intolerance to Christian beliefs.

Brown's positioning of Christianity and the concept of 'the West'

There is a convenient fiction running through Brown's paper that Christianity is to Western society what Islam is to Muslim society. Brown appears to identify the whole of Christianity with the West when he writes 'For much of history Islamic societies had a political and military ascendancy over the west'. In fact Islam has historically made few inroads into 'the west', except in Spain and the borders of Western Europe. This statement only makes sense if by 'the west', Brown means 'Christianity'.

The equation is even clearer when he writes: 'Islam has become not a nation but a civilisation, probably more ethnically and culturally diverse than the Christian west.' What makes the comparison so stilted is the idea of Christian = West. In fact Christian communities, from the Inuit of Canada, to the Karen in Burma, to the Copts of Egypt, are as ethnically diverse as the whole of humanity itself.

The whole idea of the 'Christian West' has its roots in the now defunct and discredited idea of a Western Christendom. It ignores, for example, the great significance of Russia and the Orthodox church in Christian-Muslim history who, along with Byzantium, were always 'East', never 'West'.

Christianity is not a Western religion, neither in its origins, nor its present-day distribution. Its adherents are found in Ethiopia and Burma just as authentically as in England or Australia. Christians in the 2nd and 3rd worlds outnumber their counterparts in 'Western' countries.

One of the unfortunate effects of the way Brown positions Christianity as the Western equivalent of Islam, is that he can then ignore the often critical situation of Christians - and of adherents of other religions in general - who currently live in Muslim countries.

Experts who pay attention to such things estimate that 175,000 Christians lose their lives each year because of their faith all around the world. Of the 52 countries identified by Open Doors International as places where Christians are persecuted for their faith, 37 are Muslim, including 21 of the worst 25 countries for persecution (the other 4 are all communist regimes). In these 20 countries, Muslim-Christian relations do not align with the West-Muslim divide. For example in Saudi Arabia Christian, Filipino contract labourers have been repeatedly subjected to religious persecution, including imprisonment and torture. Western workers in Saudi Arabia are only exempted from these discriminatory practices because of the comparatively stronger political place of Western countries in the world order.

Christian communities throughout the world are constantly exposed to reports of such discrimination through their own church networks. This exposure must be understood as a significant present-day factor in shaping Christian (as distinct from Western) attitudes to Islam among church-goers, far more significant in its effects than historical events of past centuries. This is a source of news which, like Muslim communication networks, is an important dynamic in positioning the world religions at this time.

All these things are important to understand, because in this post-Christendom era it is increasingly irrelevant to think in Christendom categories such as 'the Christian West'.

Is there moral advantage in numbers of dead?

It is morally bankrupt to attempt to establish the moral high ground in terms of relative numbers of casualties. An example of this kind of reasoning is found in Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall's anti-Christian apologetics from earlier this century:

". before every massacre of Christians by Muslims of which you read, there was a more wholesale massacre or attempted massacre of Muslims by Christians."

Pickthall himself was responding to still fresh memories amongst educated Europeans of the genocide of the Armenians in which millions were massacred. He has, as it were, to up the ante to achieve the moral high ground. Christian examples of this kind of thinking can no doubt be found as well. But as Bishop Alexis Bilindibagabo, Tutsi survivor of the Rwandan massacres explained it to me once, if you have lost 2 and I have lost 10, then we have both lost 12. Virtue cannot be measured by the numbers of one's dead.

This sort of moral reasoning breeds hatred and self-delusion, as each side jostles to occupy the position of greater victimhood, and anaesthetizes itself to the stories of its 'opponents' sufferings.

But to balance this tendency are a few important principles.

Take off the masks

One is truth-telling. This is 'taking off the mask' - another idea of Bishop Alexis. In the Australian Aboriginal journey to reconciliation, telling the story has been fundamental. Sorrow for the past is an opportunity for healing, forgiveness and accountability. It is necessary. It helps you move on. It is important to remember, not so as to fuel hatred, but out of respect for the peoples of the past. Lest their memory disappear altogether. Lest we be cursed with a false past, by a kind of collective false memory syndrome. We must remember. But not for the purpose of moral grand-standing.

In this day and age it is customary for individuals, institutions and nations to let its past speak clearly. To enter the modern world Islam needs to come to terms with its own past, and with the voices of its conquered peoples, just as Christianity has had to listen to Jewish voices, and the voices of its own sectarian divisions.

These voices are not always easy to hear. A problem with so much Western Islamologists' writings, for all their erudition, is the gloss of 'tolerance ' which is liberally applied to paste over vast stretches of history, subduing the voices of the dhimmi multitudes, obliterating them from the pages of history. The reasons for this are manifold. There is, for example, the linguist problem. The task of writing the history of Muslim conquest through the eyes of the believers is much easier than doing it through the eyes of the conquered peoples. An Islamocentric perspective can be gained from a knowledge of Arabic. In contrast, stories of the conquered peoples are rendered in a bewildering babble of tongues, including Greek, Armenian, Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin and its medieval derivatives, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopian, Persian, Serbian, Macedonian, Russian, Hindi, and numerous other languages of the Indian sub-continent, Africa, and central and southeast Asia. Moreover the scholarly languages through which access can be gained into these languages include Portuguese, Dutch, French, German and Russian.

The stories of the subject peoples have in many cases simply submerged, never to reappear. Or they have been relegated to the shadows, as peoples that history forgot. Their voices cannot be expected to speak clearly or with a uniform vision - they are a disjointed cacophony of contradictions, full of the confusions of the defeated. All this makes it very difficult to see Muslim history through non-Muslim eyes, but for the sake of truth we must do so.

Understand theology

Our second principle - and this is something that the secular West finds incredibly difficult to come to terms with - is that in tracing the impact of the revealed religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam, you can't afford to ignore the 'book'. You have to go back to the root and the root is what the faiths regard as the original deposit. And you have to study the whole text, as well as the traditions for interpreting it, not just the nice bits that are what you want to use for the argument you are currently pursuing. To do all this you need to enter into a whole world view and a distinct interpretation of history, which may be very different from that of contemporary Western secular humanism.

In his paper, Brown has opted for the nice bits that fit, such as 'There is no compulsion in Islam', or 'Keep to forgiveness and enjoin kindness' (Muhammad), and ignored the bits of the Koran that don't, such as the many injunctions to battle against unbelievers, including phrases like cut off their fingers and strike them on the necks. He ignores the theological root which keeps bringing new energy into the whole tree. A constant sap flow of doctrine comes out of the root to renew the whole.

This common root doesn't necessarily bring uniformity, but it will shape the development of the branches. Religious teachers are key players in this process, as we are seeing in Pakistan, where students are an important resource for radicalism.

Islam as a historical and contemporary movement is incomprehensible unless we acknowledge the Koranic doctrine of jihad, and its associated institution of dhimmitude. The grand narrative of 'tolerant Islam' represents an attempt to ignore and minimize these institutions, and to silence the history of the subject peoples who have been swept up into the household of Islam.

Certainly Muslims all around the world vary greatly in the intensity of their beliefs, ranging from practical atheism to the radical Islamism of Osama Bin Laden. There are differing contemporary understandings of jihad, for example. But despite this great diversity, in the end there is only one well or source, which is the words of the Messenger: the Koran together with the hadiths. The West would do well to understand what lies in this well, and its power to keep reinvigorating the will of future generations of Muslims. For this is the way all religions of the book keep regenerating themselves.

Be open to assessing the ability of religious traditions to influence behaviour

How does religion influence peoples' lives? Answering this question requires attention to the doctrines, and to the details of history. In some institutions, such as marriage, religions can have an obvious and persistent effect. Polygamy is endorsed by Islam, and it is correspondingly widely attested through Islamic history. Giving alms for Muslim poor is endorsed by Islam, and this too is universally practised, because it is there in the book.

However Brown errs when he makes sweeping value judgements based on scant evidence a highly problematic concept of 'tolerance', whilst studiously avoiding a full critical engagement with religious doctrine. The current trend of commentary post September 11 which refuses to critically examine Islamic theology and history is potentially very destructive in the long term. It blinds us to a sober consideration of the powerful effects which faith exerts over peoples' behaviour.

What we must also avoid is to confuse the critical intellectual engagement with ideas and doctrines, with condemnation of peoples who may hold those ideas. If anyone who questions the violent injunctions in the Koran is to be judged guilty of prejudice or hatred against Muslims - as Brown suggests - then we will all get nowhere.

A significant omission in Brown's analysis is the rise of Islamism throughout the world in recent decades. I will not explore the reasons for this here, but its effects are clear in terms of increasing attention to doctrine, an acceleration of long-term processes of Islamization in societies around the world, and transformation of community customs to draw them closer to the norms of the shari'ah. (One can point, for example, to the rise in use of the veil by women all throughout the Islamic world.) The Islamist trend is an important historical phenomenon that must be acknowledged and understood.

I will end with a lesson from history. Aceh is a well-known case where a Western colonial power at first misread the role of religious teachings in fuelling resistance. In the late 1800's the Acehnese waged an effective guerilla jihad against Dutch colonial dominance. This war was expensive for the Dutch and relatively fruitless in its outcomes for thirty years. It was only after a penetrating analysis of Acehnese society by the Dutch famous Islamologist Snouck Hurgronje that the Dutch military, understanding at last the religious nature of the continuing resistance, implemented new military objectives which targeted and neutralized sources of radical Islamic ideology - notably the key ulamas.

Even after general pacification, individual acts of personal jihad against the Dutch continued right up until the Japanese occupation. Dutch psychological examination showed that these individuals were quite sane and in their right mind. They knew exactly what they were doing and why, and it was religious doctrine that was paramount in moving them from the position of being dissatisfied villagers under a colonial power to willing martyrs. For the interest of the reader, I attach a translation of an Acehnese account of such an event.

The Hikayat Prang Sabi and 'Acehnese murder'

Mark Durie

University of Melbourne

This passage gives something of the flavour of at least one function manuscripts can have in an Indonesian society. This is a translated excerpt from a collection of Acehnese stories Batjut sapeue 'A bit of this and that' by a well-known literary figure, now deceased, Anzib Lamnyong. The typed booklet is from the author's private collection (item no.1780). The title page is dated 1967, but the preface bears the date June 1945. The passage below tells of the deed of an Acehnese man, Lem Abah, who listened to a clandestine recitation of the famous Hikayat Prang Sabi, an epic poem about martyrdom, and was incited to an individual act of 'war' the following day. The phenomenon of random attempts on the lives of Europeans by individual Acehnese was well-known to the Dutch as Atjeh-moord 'Acehnese murder'. (The word 'terrorist' has not yet been invented.) This was a religious deed described by James Siegel (Shadow and sound, p.82) as 'a private form of the prang sabi [Jihad, or holy war]'. Siegel reports that there were at least 120 cases of Atjeh-moord between 1910 and 1937. The link between Atjeh-moord and hikayat manuscripts was known to the Dutch after H.T. Damste made a study of Acehnese war texts, publishing some excerpts. Damste wrote of the public feeling among the Dutch about this hikayat and its consequences in his article Hikayat Prang Sabi (1928): "In the course of 1924 this hikayat was the talk of the town. Whenever there was an attempted murder, this hikayat was to blame! A hunt was organized, the quarry caught, and the hikayats were confiscated and sentenced to the fire. At my request a number of the condemned were saved from the pyre and sent to me - and I recognized my old friends!"

[Anzib Lamnyong's story begins with an account of the Dutch subjugation of Aceh, the guerilla resistance, the feeling of the Acehnese populace, and conditions pertaining in Greater Aceh in the first years of this century, culminating in the hated head tax, imposed in 1907. Anzib reports that events related below took place in 1908.]

One night in a certain house in the village of Peurada, in the Three Mukims of Kayee Adang, a recitation of the Hikayat Prang Sabi was taking place. Around that house people stood watch, guarding lest a Dutch spy should show up. For if a spy were to discover what was happening, everyone would certainly be tied up and taken to Lamnyong barracks, and the manuscript of the Hikayat Prang Sabi would be seized as booty.

The owner of the house was called Lem Abah. He was 25 years old, and had just married Sinyak Ti Hawa, who was 18. He had originally come from Daya in West Aceh. He listened, enchanted by the story of the Hikayat Prang Sabi. What Lem Abah heard struck deep into his heart:

The sayings of the Prophet are true, there is no way to avoid the Prang Sabi.

If God gives a share in it, there is no point in fleeing; Paradise awaits you.

Hey my dear ones, my precious ones, do not be enamoured of this world.

Cast it behind you, shake it loose; go to behold Paradise with your own eyes.

Do not be concerned for child and wife; it is Rabbokade (the Lord Almighty)

who sustains them.

Aljahadu wajibun 'alaikom (the Jihad is obligatory); you all understand the meaning.

In the Doomsday Fields there will be bitter agony; male and female, we will all gather there.

It is obligatory to adhere to this: bitter agony without equal!

Because of this do not be distracted; it is your pious duty, my friends.

Of pious deeds, my brothers, let us push ahead to perform what surpasses all.

Even now it is our religious duty; amaduddin (the foundation of religion) of religion.

This is as was said by Saidilmursalin [the foremost of the prophets]; let us all take this to heart.

Aljahadu wajibun 'alaik?m [the Jihad is obligatory]; understand this well my friends.

The first [i.e. the most important thing] is the confession of faith, the second is prayer; the third is war with the Dutch.

No other way is fitting; hey my brother you must obey this.

This is absolutely obligatory in these times, now that the Dutch are here.

You must obey, my brothers; arise and press forward.

Be faithful my brothers, lest when we return to the Lord we be overcome with remorse.

It was the middle of the night. The Hikayat Prang Sabi had been recited through to its conclusion. The company had all departed, going their various ways. By three in the morning the moon was right overhead: it was waning, but its light was still very bright.

It was long after all everyone else in Lem Abah's house had fallen asleep: no matter how he placed himself on his mat, his eyes refused to close. He was in turmoil as he pondered. What was his heart surging on towards?

Up under the roof a dagger was stored, its blade somewhat rusty because it had never been used. Lem Abah's wife, Siti Hawa, was deep in sleep. Very carefully, he slowly got up, drew out the dagger from under the roof, and went straight down from the house [Acehnese houses are traditionally raised up off the ground], pulling the door shut behind him. Down on the ground he drew the dagger from its sheath and passed it across a whetstone two or three times until it was sharp. After feeling its edge he sheathed it and tied it to his waist. Saying Bismillah, he took his first steps towards Banda Aceh. Wrapping himself in a sarong, he walked steadily along the road through Blang Pineung to the city.

With the help of Allah Lem Abah arrived just before dawn, while it was still dark, at the billiard hall 'Atjeh Sociteit', which after our liberation was renamed the 'Bale Teuku Umar'. At that time there happened to be a high-ranking Dutchman there, standing right in front of Lem Abah. The dagger, kept concealed beneath his clothes, had been kept clenched in Lem Abah's fist all this time. He was after anyone at all, just as long as it was a Dutch infidel, so that he could stab them immediately with that dagger. And now how fortunate he had been, for there right in front of him in plain view was a Dutchman. Without hesitating, Lem Abah attacked. Although the fat Dutchman, a big tall man, tried to ward him off, Lem Abah managed to stab him twice in the chest. Then the Dutchman pitched over, crying out for help. In an instant soldiers and police guards converged on the spot, giving the alarm. Scores of soldiers came rushing out with rifles. They surrounded Lem Abah as he tried to run away. In the end, when they had managed to arrest him, they handcuffed him and put chains on his arms, all the while beating and kicking him. Then they threw him in a cell.

In accordance with the sentence passed on him, Lem Abah was banished to Java for the rest of his life. He was never heard of again. Perhaps they killed him after all: perhaps he died. Many of his companions are still with us here in Aceh today.

This story I have told is no tall tale. It truly did happen, in the year 1908. Very often people attacked the Dutch like that, so that the Dutch had to keep a very close guard on Banda Aceh, night and day, all around the whole city. But no matter how well those guards kept watch, they still kept getting attacked by our people, who would strike them down and make off with their rifles. The Dutch were in great consternation about our brave people, who did not fear the bullet that might strike them dead in the twinkling of an eye.

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