The way of Islam

MUSLIMS everywhere should join the holy war against the United States and her allies. So said Sulemain Abu Gheit yesterday, spokesman for the al Qaida terrorist group. Abu Gheit is a henchman of Osama bin Laden, the extremist who characterises the present war as one between the West and Islam.

But Tony Blair has gone out of his way to dismiss that suggestion. "We do not act against Islam," he told the Labour Party conference last week.

"The true followers of Islam are our brothers and sisters in this struggle. Bin Laden is no more obedient to the proper teaching of the Koran than those Crusaders of the 12th century who pillaged and murdered, represented the teaching of the Gospel."

This was a fight against terror and nothing else, he insisted.

Despite the Prime Minister's best efforts, a major casualty of the war is western understanding of Islam. After the air attacks on the US, mosques were targeted by vandals both here and in America.

People are wrongly blaming the religion, rather than the fanatics, for what has happened, says Yusuf Tumilty, a prominent York Muslim.

"Islam is a religion of peace," he said. "The Koran says to take an innocent's life it is as if you have taken the life of the whole world; to save an innocent's life is as if you have saved the life of the whole world."

So it is a travesty for the men who plotted and carried out the attacks on the United States to claim they did so in Islam's name.

"You will always find somebody that will twist words to try to suit his own agenda. That's what's happened in this case. We have a load of rabid clerics plying some distortion of Islam. Unfortun-ately, some young and impressionable people are swallowing it.

"These people who have carried out these atrocities, every right minded soul in the world had to condemn what happened. It was an absolute outrage to claim that was done in the name of God."

The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has also twisted Islam into something ugly.

"It's an extremist interpretation. The way they treat women is a classic example. Nowhere in the Koran does it justify this sort of treatment.

"People talk about modern society. We have had the vote for women for what, less than 100 years. Women had the vote 1,400 years ago in Islam.

"Islam freed people from slavery and class and poverty and made them responsible for their own actions.

"What these people are doing is confuse their own culture with Islam.

"There's an awful lot of things that Muslims do that has nothing to do with Islam, just as Christians do things that are nothing to do with Christianity."

Islam is "very misunderstood" in the West. "I am quite sad that the Christians don't understand how close they are to Islam, and how much we have in common - more than between Christians and Jews.

"People see the media coverage and they're frightened. They're frightened that you have got to step back 1,400 years in time if you want to be a Muslim.

"But the Koran is a message for all time. It's a very complex book: very simple in some ways, very difficult in others."

Another misconception is the jihad. According to the Ontario Consultants On Religious Tolerance, jihad is not a synonym of "holy war" and thus a call to arms against the non-Islamic world. "The vast majority of Muslims have an entirely different definition of jihad. It is seen as a personal, internal struggle with one's self. The goal may be achievement in a profession, self-purification, the conquering of primitive instincts or the attainment of some other noble goal."

What cannot be misinterpreted is the popularity of Islam. It is estimated that the faith has 1.2 billion adherents, making it the second largest religion in the world after Christianity. And at a rate of growth of 2.9 per cent a year, Islam could soon become the number one.

Mr Tumilty, a 51-year-old HGV driver, was drawn to Islam 11 years ago. "I used to work in Saudi Arabia after I left the forces. That opened my eyes to Islam."

After he came back, he "made a bit of a mess" of his life. "I had real trouble with alcohol. I was really at rock bottom."

He lost his job after an accident at work crushed his leg. His family life was in turmoil and he knew he had to change.

One momentous day he rediscovered Islam. "I was in the library and found a copy of the Koran on the shelf. I was reading it until they threw me out at teatime, and then I took it home with me and read all night, until the wee small hours.

"I thought this is the way I have got to go."

At the mosque in York he was welcomed with open arms.

The devout lifestyle, free of alcohol and full of prayer, was very different to the one he had known. Born in Scotland, Mr Tumilty spent much of his childhood in Malta, before he joined the air force aged 16, which brought him to Linton-on-Ouse. He married a "local girl" and when he returned to civvy street in 1977, they settled in York.

He was brought up a Catholic. "It was a strict upbringing. I always got myself into trouble for asking why. 'Why have I got to do this?'

"I used to get one hell of a rap across the knuckles when they didn't have the answer. When I started reading the Koran, the answers started leaping off the page at me."

Like most Muslim leaders, Mr Tumilty condemns bin Laden and the Taliban, but is against the war. "It's not going to solve any problems at all. It's going to make matters worse.

"Winter's coming in Afghanistan. It's vicious there. By the time spring comes in next year, God knows how many bodies you are going to find."

And while he accepts that "certain elements of Islam need to drag themselves into the modern world" he believes the West in general - and America particularly - have to put their own house in order.

"They jump around with their size 14s and are not responsible for the aftermath. They go into an area, pillaging their mineral wealth, then they pull out, leaving everybody to it.

"The West has to take responsibility for what it's done. The West has created all of the trouble spots we know about for the past 40 or 50 years."

How can it be right, he asks, that "the world's wealth be concentrated in the hands of less than one per cent of the population? What about the other people who have got absolutely nothing?"

The only answer is for the world to work "as a civilisation, as humanity" to build a fairer society.

Updated: 10:46 Thursday, October 11, 2001