The reason we haven't noticed American Muslims condemning terrorism

Actually, they do, but until recently it was often in ways that their fellow Americans had a hard time hearing.

By Paul M. Barrett

Read more: Osama Bin Laden, Opinion, Muslim, al-qaida, Al Qaeda, September 11th

March 1, 2007 | "What I want to know is: Why haven't these American Muslims you write about denounced terrorism?" The speaker, wearing an expression of earnest frustration, stood first in line to get a signed copy of my new book after a reading I did last week at the Los Angeles Public Library. "You say there are these moderate Muslims," he continued. "Why don't we hear from them about terrorism?"

It's a question I've heard at every bookstore, library, radio station and television studio where I've appeared around the country in the past month as I promoted my book "American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion." More than five years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many Americans still want to know why they haven't heard Muslims in the U.S. issue louder, clearer condemnations of terrorism. Muslim Americans who attend my readings often counter, sometimes with great emotion, that they have repeatedly denounced terrorism but that non-Muslims don't listen.

But this disconnect may not stem entirely from a failure to listen. It may also have to do with the way American Muslims have condemned terrorism. Specifically, until recently, Muslim leaders often added caveats to their condemnations that robbed them of real force.

The vast majority of Muslims I spoke with while researching my book were eager to deplore the killing of civilians for religious or ideological motives. Non-Muslims who insist they haven't heard from moderate Muslims on the topic of terrorism simply haven't paid attention to outspoken figures like Khaled Abou El Fadl. A scholar of Egyptian descent who teaches Islamic law at UCLA, Abou El Fadl takes an unambiguous stand opposing religiously motivated violence against innocents, no matter what the alleged justification.

After 9/11, Abou El Fadl appeared frequently in the national media. He emphasized the restrictions the Quran placed on stealth attacks, rebellion and harm to noncombatants. He told the CBS Evening News in October 2003: "You cannot kill a woman, you cannot kill a child, you cannot kill a senior individual, you cannot kill a hermit, you cannot kill a member of the clergy, you cannot even kill peasants who are not fighters." He emphasized that in modern terms, these prohibitions translate into a ban on all terrorism.

While he rejects the idea that moderate Muslims have been mute on terrorism, Abou El Fadl has argued that Muslim leaders in the U.S. have failed "to convince the American public of the outrage felt by most Muslims over the tragedy of September 11." Abou El Fadl has proposed a huge Muslim demonstration of mourning at the World Trade Center site: something truly dramatic and designed to attract television coverage, so the world would have to take notice.

This criticism went off like a bomb within Muslim circles. "When you find a statement like that from an insider, it creates anger," Maher Hathout told me. A retired cardiologist from Egypt, Hathout helped build the prominent Islamic Center of Southern California as well as the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a civil rights group based in Los Angeles. He believes American Muslims did enough after the attacks. "We spoke very loudly against that. We made a quilt with all of the names of victims. Some of them, I think, were Muslims. We sent the quilt to ground zero, then we put it in a church in New York."

But Hathout's characterization of the attack also includes one of those troubling asterisks. When he says he reviles the 9/11 hijackers, he also tries to deny that they are Muslims. "If those people claim to be Muslims," he says, "this is against every fiber in Islam." In his circular reasoning, real Muslims can have no connection to terrorism because Islam forbids such violence. Ergo, Muslims didn't carry out 9/11 since anyone who could do such a thing is not a real Muslim. This verbal feint could suggest evasiveness to some listeners.

Hathout is excommunicating the 9/11 attackers after the fact. There are other prominent Muslims, however, who still try to cast doubt on the official story about 9/11. They are suggesting that Muslims were not at fault -- that someone else did the deed.

Siraj Wahhaj, an African-American convert to Islam and one of the most popular Muslim preachers in the country, frequently headlines national Muslim conferences and speaks to Islamic groups on college campuses. An unusual crossover star who appeals to both black and immigrant Muslim audiences, he has few rivals as a celebrity within the faith in America. During long interviews at his home mosque in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, N.Y., Wahhaj denounced those responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and said he grieved for the victims and their families.

But years after Osama bin Laden himself took credit for the massacre, Wahhaj refused to ascribe blame to the Saudi terrorist or his al-Qaida network. "I'm not sure if I've seen the evidence that says that they've done it," he told me. "I'm not unlike so many other Muslims around the world and even in this country -- decent Muslims who would never agree to something like that [9/11], who are just not sure" of bin Laden's culpability. Wahhaj explained that bin Laden's videotaped boasts about the attacks may have been a media ruse: doctored videotape, perhaps, or even a performance staged by American-backed operatives.

The imam's refusal to acknowledge bin Laden's guilt is incomprehensible to an outsider and obviously obscures any anti-terrorism message he might be trying to convey. As a Muslim leader, he contributes to the impression held by many non-Muslims that people of his faith aren't entirely sorry to have seen the U.S. taken down a notch.

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