Struggle For The Soul Of Islam

By Bill Powell

Four years ago, Mohammed Shakr sent his son away.

Shakr (not his real name) lives in Baghdad, where he works as a translator, and he wanted the young man, Omar, to escape the oppression of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. So he sent Omar to a vocational school in the United Arab Emirates, where he studied automotive maintenance. But as the years went by, Shakr, 50, began to be worried about his son. Omar wrote letters to his father, a smoker, lecturing him about Islam's disdain for tobacco. He chided his mother for wearing Western-style clothes to work. Omar finally returned to Baghdad this spring, after the fall of Saddam's regime. When he showed up at the family home, his father's heart sank. Once clean shaven, Omar now wore a long beard, and his dishdasha, the traditional Islamic gown, fell several inches short of the floor. These are trademarks of Islamic fundamentalists.

This was no longer the carefree young man he knew, Shakr thought, the son who loved to dance and go to parties. Now whenever the music channel was on television, Omar got up and left the room. One day he sternly told his father, who works for an American company, that the U.S. was the "enemy'' of Islam. Shakr's concern deepened. Finally he told friends at work, "I have to rescue Omar. I have to bring back my son."

The war that began three years ago in lower Manhattan has never been a conventional one, waged solely against enemy armies in distant lands. It is a fight for the hearts and minds and souls of millions of Muslims like Omar Shakr, whose life choices may have a greater impact on the long-term security of the U.S., its citizens and its allies than battlefield victories or intelligence reforms. That struggle did not become immediate for most Americans until Sept. 11, 2001, but it has burned in the Islamic world for decades. On one side are the proselytizers of radical Islam, many of whom celebrate the hateful vision of Osama bin Laden. The slaughter last week of hundreds of schoolchildren in Russia by a group of Chechen rebels that Russian officials say may have included foreign Islamic militants was the latest reminder of the terrorists' depravity. On the other side are Islamic moderates, those who believe Muslims can coexist peacefully with people of other faiths, or of no faith at all, because they do so every day, all across the world. The confrontation between the opposing forces of Islam amounts to what Princeton scholar Michael Scott Doran calls a "civil war" within one of the world's fastest-growing religions--a war so tumultuous and far-reaching that, as in Mohammed and Omar's case, it pits fathers against sons.

The U.S. and its allies have succeeded in killing and apprehending hundreds of al-Qaeda terrorists and disrupting the command structure that bin Laden used to plot the Sept. 11 attacks. But the wider campaign to defuse the appeal of Islamic extremism and win over those who sympathize with al-Qaeda has produced mixed results and has become a central issue of contention in the U.S. presidential campaign. Democratic candidate John Kerry says the Bush Administration's actions in the world since 9/11, particularly the invasion of Iraq, "have resulted in an increase of animosity and anger" and encouraged the recruitment of terrorists. The Administration's defenders argue that the U.S. can best provide an alternative to radical Islam by projecting military power into the heart of the Islamic world and bringing democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq. But Bush told TIME in an interview last month that he views the war on terrorism as a "long-lasting ideological struggle." Appearing on the Today show last week, he seemed to express doubts that the U.S. can extinguish the threat of terrorism. "I don't think we can win it," he said. "But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world." A day later, Bush revised his position, saying that while "we may never sit down at a peace table ... we are winning and we will win." Still, his vacillations suggest an acknowledgment of the truth: at the very least, the battle for the future of Islam won't be settled anytime soon, and America's ability to influence it for the better may be limited.

The outcome of this struggle does not depend solely on numbers. The vast majority of the world's more than 1 billion practicing Muslims are peaceful citizens getting on with their lives. But interviews by TIME with religious leaders, Islamic scholars, government analysts and ordinary citizens in dozens of countries around the world reveal that the fervor of those who adhere to radical forms of Islam has intensified since 9/11. While Muslims continue to consume and even celebrate Western pop culture, hostility to the policies of the West, in particular the U.S., appears to be on the rise. It is being propelled in part by anger at the U.S.'s staunch support of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians, contempt for the U.S.'s occupation of Iraq and opposition to crackdowns on militancy carried out by previously permissive governments like those of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. In part because of their countries' earlier experiences with European colonialism, some Muslims, from Indonesia to Iraq, perceive the U.S.'s stated desire to bring democracy to the Middle East less as a liberating force than as an unwelcome form of Western meddling.

Though precise figures are impossible to pinpoint, the number of Muslims espousing radical beliefs is growing, according to Western analysts and intelligence agencies. Many Muslims say the global war on terrorism and the U.S. presence in Iraq have fueled perceptions that Islam is under attack. "We are passing through the hardest moments of spreading the moderate voice of our religion," says Sheik Khaled el-Guindi, 42, a moderate imam in Cairo. "Most of the pictures we see are of Iraqi heads stepped on by American Army boots. It is no longer just an occupation, but a humiliation." Says Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a Pakistani cleric and Member of Parliament: "The U.S. and its allies must realize that by occupation, by killing and by dishonoring Muslim women--such as in the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq--they are sowing the seeds of hatred."

The intensity of such sentiments varies, reflecting the diversity of the Islamic world. Only 18% of the world's Muslims are ethnic Arabs. In Southeast Asian countries with sizable Muslim populations, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, radical Islam does not command a wide following. In both Indonesia and Malaysia, Islamic fundamentalist parties have lost political support in recent elections. But a U.S. State Department report on global terrorism warned last year that Muslim communities in the region are vulnerable to the "radical influences" of extremists because of the substantial financing that Islamic schools and mosques continue to receive from wealthy fundamentalists. And Islamic moderates say the situation in Iraq has put them on the defensive. Says Musdah Mulia, a progressive scholar in Indonesia: "The moderates are finding it more difficult to discuss issues like human rights and democracy when photos of Americans torturing Iraqis keep appearing."

In Western Europe as well, experts say, while the number of the region's estimated 12.5 million Muslims who have joined extremist groups has not increased significantly, fundamentalists "have adopted a higher profile, and become more influential," according to Abderrahmane Dahmane, president of France's Council of Muslim Democrats. Most Muslim leaders in France have backed Paris' refusal to give in to demands by Islamic militants holding two French journalists in Iraq that France reverse a law barring Muslim students from wearing head scarves in school. Yet European countries still face a potential surge in radicalism, fueled by the social and economic marginalization of Muslim minorities and growing anti-Americanism. Says Dahmane: "America has created a situation where even modern, democratic and peace-loving Muslims have some ambivalent feelings."

Nowhere are the stakes in Islam's future higher than in the crescent of turmoil that runs from the Persian Gulf states to Pakistan and across North Africa. In several nations, moderates are locked in showdowns for political supremacy with fundamentalists aspiring to create an Islamic empire to challenge the West. Will control of Iraq devolve to the moderate Shi'ites and Sunnis or to the fundamentalist insurgents of both sects who have made parts of the country terrorist sanctuaries? Will pro-democracy reformers in Iran wrest power from the country's aging theocrats or be squelched by a new crackdown? Can Pakistan's secular government and Saudi Arabia's ruling family survive the increasingly violent campaign waged by bin Laden--linked extremists to destroy them both? Here's a glimpse at the global war for the future of Islam--and what it may mean for the rest of the world.

"ALLAH SAYS FIGHT"

When Hassan Butt, a 24-year-old British Pakistani, enters a curry restaurant in Manchester, an industrial city in northern England, he is greeted as a minor celebrity, the other diners nodding and smiling at him. He is the former Lahore spokesman for al-Muhajiroun, an extremist group based in Britain. Since his falling-out with the group, the British-born Butt has had his passports impounded and is under surveillance. "I would fit into being called a radical, and one day, God willing, even to be called a terrorist, if Allah permits me," Butt says. "This is something it would be an honor to be called."

Butt says his goal is nothing less than to restore the rule of "central [Islamic] authority'' over as much of the world as possible, as in the time of the Prophet Muhammad and his successors. There is no way to interpret the Koran other than literally, Butt insists, and therefore no room for "moderation.'' If, in the Koran, he says, "Allah says fight, you fight. How can anyone take a 'moderate' view of this?" And as soon as he gets his passports back, he insists, he will be off to do as Allah commands. To his fellow radicals, in the meantime, he offers a piece of advice: "Be proud, be loud."

The overwhelming majority of Muslims condemn violence committed in their religion's name. Many Islamic scholars take pains to point out that the basic texts of the faith never sanction the wanton murder of civilians--the defining feature of contemporary Islamic terrorism. But rage is shared by tens of thousands of radicals, estimated conservatively, who span the globe, from the badlands of Pakistan to middle-class neighborhoods of Western Europe. In Britain, a recent government survey put the number of hard-core Muslim radicals at 10,000 and growing. A poll of British Muslims in March found that 13% believe that "further attacks by al-Qaeda or similar organizations on the U.S.A." would be justified. In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, only 15% view the U.S. favorably, compared with 61% in 2002. In Saudi Arabia, according to a recent poll, 48.7% of the population sympathizes with the aims of bin Laden.

There is no pat explanation for what draws people to Islam in its most toxic, intolerant form. According to studies for a government project to counter the spread of Muslim extremism in Britain, recruitment for radical groups is just as likely to take place on college campuses, among educated middle-class Muslims, as it is in poor neighborhoods. Historians like Princeton's Bernard Lewis argue that such factors as the repressive nature of many Arab governments and the sense of aggrievement that has plagued Muslim societies since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire also play a part in fueling virulent Islam. And so does the fact that radical Islam holds, for some, the attractions of any other faith: a world view, a strict discipline and order to life, a reason to live and an alluring vision of an afterlife.

In the past three years, the spiritual appeal of fundamentalism has been buttressed by a political imperative: defending Islam against the U.S. The American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has provided militant clerics like Pakistan's Maulana Abdul Aziz with a potent recruiting tool. Every Friday at the so-called Red Mosque, which sits a mile from the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, Aziz incites his followers to take up arms against the U.S. The government of President Pervez Musharraf has told Aziz to tone down his rhetoric, but he has refused. "I told them that my God is Allah, not Bush or Musharraf," he says. "I openly tell my students to go for jihad, to fight for Muslims and punish those who have occupied Muslim lands."

Defenders of the war in Iraq point out that for all of the occupation's turmoil, the horrors of Saddam's rule were far worse. But the images of ongoing violence and devastation in Iraq, beamed all over the Islamic world by satellite channels like al-Jazeera, have inarguably emboldened radical Islamists, who equate the U.S. occupation in Iraq with Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. Moderate Muslims say negative reports from Iraq have rendered futile their attempts to counter the rhetoric of the radicals. "You get in debates about Islam with other Muslims, about the need to modernize, to be more tolerant, less anti-Semitic, and people say to me, 'Yes, but look at what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians,'" says Canadian journalist Irshad Manji, author of the provocative book The Trouble with Islam. "'Or look at what the U.S. is doing in Iraq.' It's hard these days to get beyond that." Egyptian cleric el-Guindi, who has a large following among affluent Muslims in Cairo, says he can no longer preach in public because of pressure from conservative clerics who object to his brand of liberal Islam. "These days," he says, "it is extremely depressing to be a Muslim preacher with a moderate message. The surrounding circumstances form a huge stumbling block."

Critics of the Bush Administration charge that the U.S. has failed to invest in "public diplomacy" programs aimed at improving the image of the U.S. in Muslim countries. The U.S. will spend $1 billion on public diplomacy this year, a figure that has not increased since Sept. 11 and that amounts to 0.3% of the country's defense budget. Of that amount, about $86 million goes toward cultural-and educational-exchange programs aimed specifically at the Muslim and Arab world. And yet even positive steps--like the creation of its own Arab-language television and radio networks--have been overshadowed by the inflammatory impact of the invasion of Iraq and the U.S.'s overt backing of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "Our policies are objectionable to large parts of the Arab world," says a senior State Department official. "It's very hard to communicate with people when they're shooting the messenger. Our message is often dead on arrival."

"ISLAM IS POLITICS" --Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran, 1979

Even Muslim critics of the Bush Administration's style say that its post-9/11 push for political liberalization has helped rekindle debates that have long simmered across the Muslim world, encompassing everything from sexuality and gender roles to how Islam can accommodate the influence of democratic ideals and Western culture. In this, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979, had it right when he declared that Islam is inseparable from politics. In three Islamic countries whose destinies are vital to the security of the U.S.--Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Ayatullah's Iran--the political future is very much up for grabs.

IRAN In 1983 Abdolkarim Soroush, a philosopher named by Khomeini to oversee the "Islamization" of Iran's universities, quit his job. Ever since, he has been a leading thinker in pushing the case for a reformed Islam and a democratic Iran, and slowly but surely the movement has gathered momentum. Today Iran's progressive Islamic thinkers are nothing less than intellectual pop stars among students in Tehran, with heady sales of books on such topics as Islamic reform and democratization.

In Iran, as elsewhere, the students matter. Twenty-five years ago, it was Iranian students who were the vanguard of the revolution that toppled the Shah and seized the U.S. embassy. Now they generally are fed up with a government run by Islamic clerics. Young Iranian women still wear the traditional head scarves, but many now wear them with tight-fitting jeans--at once a religious, political and fashion statement. Students recently packed lecture halls at Tehran University to hear a series of talks straightforwardly billed "Transition to Democracy." One of the speakers was Mohsen Kadivar, a young cleric who talks about Iran's eventually evolving into a democracy, pushing out the ruling mullahs. "I believe Iran is the world's most influential Islamic country," Kadivar says. "We are the model other Muslims look at." The democracy movement in Iran, he says, is not about throwing off or getting rid of Islam. Reformers like Kadivar want to restore Islam to its rightful place, "to give meaning to life [but] not use it as an instrument of power."

Because of its undulating politics, Iran poses a foreign policy dilemma for the U.S., complicated by Tehran's suspected interest in obtaining a nuclear bomb. While Kerry has said he would be willing to negotiate with Iran's ruling clerics about the possibility of allowing the country to keep its nuclear facilities for peaceful purposes, some members of the Bush Administration have argued for tough sanctions and increased isolation if Iran fails to abandon its nuclear program completely. Such an approach could backfire, however, by stiffening the hard-liners' opposition to further political reform. The mullahs who run Iran have no desire to preside over the first Islamic democracy. Last February, before scheduled parliamentary elections, they disqualified almost all the reform candidates. But the true sentiment of the people may have been reflected in the low turnout: 70% of urban Iranians boycotted the election. Though they currently possess little formal political power, pro-democracy advocates cite that figure as proof that democratic reform is inevitable. Hamid Reza Jalaipour, one of Iran's foremost reformists and a professor at Tehran University, says democratic reform is inevitable. "The ideological state doesn't have a strong hold on people. Liberal Islam and democracy will win because they are far more widespread among Iranians. They're more in line with their views and lives." If Jalaipour is right, the ripple effects could be enormous. "In the gulf states alone, it would be felt very powerfully, and the gulf is the cockpit of the Middle East," says Princeton's Doran. Precisely because Iran is where Islamic radicals first took power in a revolution 25 years ago, a counterrevolution now would create huge waves in the region.

SAUDI ARABIA As much as the West hopes for a breakthrough in Iran, change remains depressingly distant in many other key Islamic states, including Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest financier of fundamentalist Islam and the home of bin Laden and 15 of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Since about 1750, when Mohammed bin Saud struck an alliance with the puritanical Islamic preacher Abdul Wahhab, the kingdom's government has effectively been joined at the hip with the austere, deeply conservative brand of Islam known as Wahhabism. Modern-day oil riches, as well as the al Saud family's desire to remain in power, mean that Wahhabi clerics have had both the freedom and the funds to spread their intolerant and anti-Semitic creed with impunity, pouring billions into the establishment of Wahhabi schools and mosques around the world.

At home, the clerics and their supporters within the divided ruling family have stifled reforms. In March, when the country's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, announced plans for the country's first municipal elections, he encountered a revolt led by his Interior Minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, a conservative who is third in line to the Saudi throne. Prince Nayef's men arrested 14 moderate writers and professors, several of whom had actually met with the Crown Prince to discuss his agenda. As a result, Abdullah's proposed reforms have been stalled.

The continuing clampdown on reformers has left Saudi modernizers distraught. "If you have a society draped with religion, of course you will reach this point of extremism," says Turki al-Hamad, a Saudi novelist and newspaper columnist. The voices of moderation, al-Hamad says, have almost no public spaces in the kingdom--no broadcast networks, no radio stations and few mosques--in which to voice their views. The extremists, meanwhile, feel no such constraints. The day before an attack by al-Qaeda militants on a compound in Khobar in late May that killed 22 people, the imam at the mosque in Medina dismissed terrorism as a "summer cloud" before ending with a typical rant against the Jews: "O vanquisher of the infidels, defeat them, shake them up, destroy them!" The failure of the Saudis to rein in such elements could prove disastrous were the clerics ever to decide to incite their followers to rise up against the regime--which bin Laden has called for. The determination of Islamic militants to topple the Saudi regime and gain control of 25% of the world's oil has only intensified in the past few years. If you compare Saudi Arabia, wellspring of Islam and home to its two holiest cities, "with European societies during the Middle Ages," says al-Hamad, "you will find the same picture."

PAKISTAN The situation is similarly distressing in Pakistan, a nuclear power that helped create neighboring Afghanistan's Taliban. It remains one of the world's most fertile breeding grounds for jihadists. Pakistani President Musharraf's decision to back the Bush Administration's war on terrorism has won him kudos abroad but none at home. In the past nine months he has survived three assassination attempts mounted by militants tied to al-Qaeda. Conservative religious parties have gained partial control of two provinces, the Northwest Frontier and Baluchistan, to which many Taliban and al-Qaeda fled from Afghanistan. The U.S. and other international donors have pumped millions of dollars into the Pakistani education system in an effort to draw students away from Saudi-funded fundamentalist madrasahs, or religious schools, where 1.5 million Pakistani children spend nearly all their time memorizing the Koran in Arabic, even though few Pakistanis speak the language. Pakistanis say that so far the government has failed to build new secular schools that would provide an alternative to the madrasahs. Religious conservatives are trying to expand their reach: a Pakistani cleric and Member of Parliament has launched a campaign to shut down cybercafes throughout the country, describing the Internet as a "red-light district."

The prospect of Islamic radicals' seizing power in Pakistan is frightening to U.S. officials, who say such a shift could bolster the Taliban's revival in Afghanistan, scuttle the hunt for bin Laden and give terrorists freer access to nuclear material. In its final report, the independent U.S. commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks recommended that Washington pony up more aid to defend Musharraf against the extremists. The trouble is, further U.S. meddling risks inflaming public opinion even more. "It is the ego of the West that is responsible for all this fighting," says Mufti Abdul Noor, 31, a teacher at Islamabad's largest religious school. "We do not want to interfere in the affairs of America or the West. We just want to live our own lives. But we are not being allowed."

"MY OMAR IS BACK"

For Americans, the most critical front in the war for Islam's future lies in the country that is home to 135,000 U.S. troops: Iraq. Among the many unintended consequences of this war is that some of the most harrowing terrorist acts being carried out in the name of Islam are taking place in a country the U.S. had hoped to transform into a model of secular democracy in the Middle East. The chances that Iraq will resemble that ideal soon are all but gone. The danger now is that control could slip into the hands of jihadists--as parts of the so-called Sunni triangle already have--intent on establishing their own fundamentalist regime that could become a breeding ground for terrorists. That gloomy prospect means there will not be any significant U.S. troop withdrawal in the near future.

If the U.S. hopes to find a way out, it will need the help of Iraqis like Mohammed Shakr. In his worst moments, Shakr was worried about losing his son completely to the radicals. He feared his son would go off to join jihad, to be one more weapon in a war that seems to have no end. To get his son back, Shakr relied on Omar's childhood friends who were not religious zealots. They began to visit Omar, invite him out, go on joyrides and reminisce about old times. To his father's relief, the strategy seemed to be working. Omar shaved off the long beard he had grown. He even began wearing T shirts and jeans again, instead of the short dishdasha. Still, his father was worried, so he broached a sensitive subject with his son. Would he consider marriage if his parents could come up with the right bride? To Shakr's delight, Omar didn't hesitate. Yes, he said, and within two days, he had settled on his wife-to-be. Soon he was spending all his time chatting with her on the phone. "My father's actions turned my life in a new direction," says Omar. "Things that were important to me before are not very important now." Mohammed says his son's transformation is complete. "My Omar is back."

In Mohammed's mind, one soul has been brought back from the brink, the one that matters most to him--his son. Small battles in the fight for Islam's future matter too. In the Islamic world now, too many stand at the same divide, between fanaticism and normality. Three years after Sept. 11, the questions are still the same: How many will make it back, as Omar did? And how many won't?

--With reporting by Massimo Calabresi/Washington, Bruce Crumley/Paris, Aparisim Ghosh/Baghdad, Scott MacLeod/Riyadh, Tim McGirk and Ghulam Hasnain/Islamabad, Amany Radwan/Cairo, Nahid Siamdoust/Tehran and Aatish Taseer/London, with other bureaus

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi/Washington, Bruce Crumley/Paris, Bobby Ghosh/Baghdad, Scott MacLeod/Riyadh, Tim McGirk and Ghulam Hasnain/Islamabad, Amany Radwan/Cairo, Nahid Siamdoust/Tehran and Aatish Taseer/London, with other bureaus