Islam 101

HONOLULU — Hakim Ouansafi watches the news on TV and shakes his head as America’s military retaliation starts in Afghanistan.

"I don’t think it’s against Muslims," he tells me. "But I know innocent people died today."

Hakim is a 37-year-old American citizen transported to Hawaii from Morocco. He wears an "aloha" shirt and does not sport a beard. He’s the president and chairman of the Muslim Association of Hawaii, president of all the mosques here, and he’s hurting.

No, he has not been the target of hate crimes. Except for one threatening phone call, the Muslims here have not been harassed, Hakim told the Jefferson Fellows at the East-West Center. But that has not made life easier for the Muslims here and elsewhere as the world responds to the terrorist attacks in the United States.

"It’s unfair," Hakim sighs. "You don’t find a Christian trying to defend his religion… You should not judge a religion by the actions of an individual. You should judge that individual by what his religion teaches."

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Hakim has been busy explaining to anyone who cares to listen what Islam is all about. On Sunday morning he addressed a gathering in a Catholic church here. In the afternoon he faced the local press. At least people are now asking questions about Islam, says Hakim. But that’s cold comfort for many of the 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide who are now feeling the backlash of the terrorist attacks.

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It’s hard to reconcile the image of a thoroughly modern Muslim like Hakim with the bearded Bin Laden or the ruthless Abu Sayyaf terrorists who chop off the heads and breasts of their Christian captives.

People are scrambling to learn what the major religion preached by the prophet Muhammad is all about. Talk shows and special TV features are devoted to Islam. Muslim leaders keep reassuring the non-Islamic world that their faith is tolerant of all other religions. Yet the reassurances pale against video footage of the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsing.

"This is Islam 101," says Hakim. "You do not touch a life that God created… throughout the Koran (it says) we’re not supposed to kill anyone, period… there is absolutely no justification for taking a life."

He condemns the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, describing America’s Public Enemy No. 1 as "a common enemy" who should not be considered a Muslim. "Go get him," he says.

"Do you know what Islam means? To submit to God. When you hear ‘Islamic terrorism’ that’s an oxymoron," he explains. "(Those terrorists) are fanatics. We are not."

Told about the atrocities perpetrated by the Abu Sayyaf in Mindanao, he says the Philippine terrorists are Islamic deviants.

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So how come there seem to be too many of these deviants?

Converts to Islam have pointed out that they were attracted to the religion because of its tolerance for races and other faiths, its strong moral code and its simple ways of worship. Islam is the fastest growing religion in America and Europe. So why is the message of the fundamentalists — or "Islamists" as some quarters call them — the one that seems to be shaping the image of Islam before the world?

I tell Hakim that part of the problem could be the lack of a supreme leader and spokesman for the Muslim world. The two major Islamic groups, the Sunni and Shiite, are feuding, with their differences centering on who has the right to adopt the title and role of a religious leader or imam. Islam’s religious leadership, the caliphate based in Constantinople, ended in 1924 following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey, the state that was born out of this collapse, promoted a modern and secular Islamic way of life, rejecting polygamy and second-class status for women. These moves triggered opposition among certain groups, giving rise to what we call fundamentalism.

Hakim emphasizes that the majority of Muslims abide by the Koran and are non-violent. "At the end of the day we’re all human beings belonging to one father and that is Adam."

But he acknowledges the threat posed to his faith by the "misguided people with nothing to lose" who invoke Islam in the pursuit of twisted ends. And he says there has been media bias against Muslims in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. "You don’t see the two sides," he laments. "There is no fairness."

Are they victims of bad PR? Hakim says Muslims are just starting to awaken to the need for a united front to counter the negative image generated by terrorists. We’ll be hearing more from these moderate voices of Islam. They’re tackling Life 101, and the lessons aren’t easy.