These words are carefully chosen because there are many Muslim societies, but an “Islamic society” is an idealized place where all Muslims would be people of perfect justice and fairness. Many Muslims agree that such a place has never existed. All are certain that it doesn’t exist today. This becomes a convenient way of avoiding uncomfortable questions about whether the more grotesque punishments set out in the Koran should ever be used. By saying yes, but only in this idealized future, their use is postponed. It is a way of remaining loyal to the literal words of the Koran while recognizing that its crueller doctrines cannot be practised in the modern world. “You can’t change the religion, it’s obvious,” says Hindy. “Some things cannot be changed.”
The unchangeable core value of Islam—one that poses a real challenge to Canada—is the matter of inequality. Aly Hindy has the power to forbid his wife to take a job. On the other hand, if she were working she would be allowed to keep her salary and he would still be obliged to support her. The problem, according to prominent scholars, like Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im of Emory University, is that shariah law has an unbroken tradition of unequal rights, especially for women. But he believes that at some point, as Muslims become more integrated into the West, the concept of equal rights for all could be introduced into shariah without destroying the social structure of the community.
The underlying idea is that an individual’s life belongs to his family, not himself. Punishment is thus tethered not to the crime itself, but to the amount of harm it causes others. It is an idea that Ashraf knows is alien to Western law. “Muslims,” he says sadly, “have to live with this situation. It’s a shame for us and a shame for you. Because in your system, nobody cares about the victim’s family.” Needing the machinery of government to give force to the Koran, Muslims have often sought to dominate the countries in which they live, such as Iran. This dilemma is acute for Mohamad Khatib, the director of the Canadian office of the Saudi-financed Muslim World League in Mississauga. When a Wahhabi directive sent from Saudi Arabia two years ago advised members of the Khalid Bin Al-Waleed mosque in north Toronto to refuse to say “Merry Christmas” to their Christian neighbours, the media went knocking on Khatib’s door.
Today, Khatib is at pains to distance his organization from terrorism and to present the faith in as acceptable a light as possible. He addresses this issue by raising the subject of Osama bin Laden. “Maybe,” he says, “Osama has nostalgia for the past. He says the world is in two camps: Islam and not Islam. Well, what can that mean for us in Canada? We don’t want to fight. Canada hasn’t oppressed us.”
Perhaps not, but the bookshelves of Khatib’s office are heavy with English translations of the Koran that have been annotated by Wahhabi scholars contemptuous of the most-followed religions in Canada. For example, sura 15:9 is accompanied by a footnote reading: “This Verse is a challenge to mankind and everyone is obliged to believe in the miracles of this Koran . . . . All the other holy books, the Torah, the Gospel, have been corrupted.” In fact sura 15:9 says nothing about other faiths. Other famous suras, which clearly advocate religious tolerance, have no footnotes.
Most Canadian Muslims are clearly seeking to build bridges to their non-Muslim neighbours. Even Mohamad Khatib acknowledges that “half the world’s Muslims want to come to the West.” He chuckles when told that what Aly Hindy most likes about Canada is that faraway relatives can’t come nosing into his private life. “Why does Aly Hindy stay here?” asks Khatib rhetorically. “Because this is a good place to live.” Other conservatives are much further down the road to integration. Mohamed Elmasry, head of the influential Canadian Islamic Congress (cic), is married to a woman from Nova Scotia and has a daughter who is a Crown attorney. His daughter does not wear the head scarf, as many believe the Koran commands. “She says,” explains Elmasry, that ” ‘I’m already odd in this profession. Wearing the hijab would be too much!’ ” Elmasry has no time for Wahhabi-style apartheid. “It is anti-Islamic to propagate isolation, especially in a multicultural society,” he says.
But his affable presentation belies a troubling nostalgia for Islamic government, which he would still like to see triumphant in his native Egypt. He also argues, against all evidence, that Afghanistan’s ruthless Taliban did not oppress women as part of their strict orthodox regime, which harboured bin Laden as he planned his 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Elmasry is caught between two worlds but he has made a commitment to Canada. At his behest, this summer the cic will offer courses in Canadian history and culture to imams arriving from abroad.
Others are resisting attempts at modernizing the faith. Once a feminist living in Australia, twelve years ago Katherine Bullock married a Muslim and converted. Now in Toronto, she wears a blue hijab pinned at the neck, refrains from listening to pop music, and declines to shake hands with men. Bullock has a doctorate in political theory, and has also written a book defending the place of women in Islam. To understand a woman’s place in the religion, she says, the liberal idea of equality must be set aside. “If we can agree that men and women can be different and no less respectful of each other,” she says, “that’s the beginning of genuine cross-cultural understanding.”
Comments