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- WORLD

Islamic scholar with the President's ear

By Jack O'Sullivan in London

A few days ago, the FBI decided to pay a call on the home of Hamza Yusuf. "He isn't home," said his wife. "He's with the President."

The FBI agents did not seem to believe her; they called the White House to check. "He's got 100 per cent security clearance," said the voice at the other end. The agents did not return.

Imam Yusuf, an Islamic teacher, was indeed with George Bush. At the meeting, he advised Mr Bush that the military term Operation Infinite Justice was blasphemous to Muslims. The President listened. He said he was sorry that the Pentagon, which chose the title, had no theologians on staff. The name was changed.

Then, after joining in with God Save America, Imam Yusuf stood outside the White House and delivered an unequivocal message: "Islam was hijacked on that September 11, 2001, on that plane as an innocent victim."

Imam Yusuf, who runs an Islamic institute in California, is fast becoming a world figure as Islam's most able theological critic of the suicide hijacking. A charismatic and popular speaker, he openly declares his belief that Islam is in a mess. He wants Muslims to return to their "true faith", stripped of violence, intolerance and hatred. Nor does he pay much deference to the states in which many Muslims live.

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"Many people in the West do not realise how oppressive some Muslim states are - both for men and for women. This is a cultural issue, not an Islamic one. I would rather live as a Muslim in the West than in most of the Muslim countries, because I think the way Muslims are allowed to live in the west is closer to the Muslim way.''

Imam Yusuf, 42, started life as Mark Hanson, the son of two US academics. He converted at 17 after a near-death experience in a car accident and reading the Koran diverted him towards Mecca. But he cannot be easily dismissed as a Western patsy. Trained for more than a decade by the best Islamic scholars in the Middle East, Imam Yusuf's learning commands considerable respect, particularly with the English-speaking elites of traditionally Muslim states.

He has a long track record of criticising Western decadence, injustice and impoverished spirituality.

"He confronts what it is to be young, British and Muslim," says Fuad Nahdi, publisher of Q-News, Britain's Muslim monthly magazine. "He shows there is life beyond beards, scarves and halal meat. He inspires confidence that you can build Islam in the West from all the local ingredients. You do not have to include political or theological burdens from traditional parts of the Muslim world."

Imam Yusuf says the September 11 attacks were acts of "mass murder, pure and simple". Suicide, he says, is haram, prohibited by the Koran, as is the killing of innocent civilians. He quotes koranic texts demonstrating that the suicide bombers do not qualify as martyrs.

"Many Muslims seem to be in deep denial about what has happened," he says. "They are coming up with different conspiracy theories and don't entertain the real possibility that it was indeed Muslims who did this. Yet we do have people within our ranks who have reached that level of hatred and misguidance.

"I would say to Muslims in the West that if they are going to rant and rave about the West, they should emigrate to a Muslim country."

His great concern is that Muslim thinking has sunk into theological shallowness that allows violent fundamentalists to fill the vacuum. Colonialism and successor powers, he contends, dismantled the great Islamic learning institutions, leaving a poverty of great scholarship.

"We Muslims have lost theologically sound understanding of our teaching," he says. "We are living through a reformation, but without any theologians to guide us through it. Islam has been hijacked by a discourse of anger and the rhetoric of rage. We have lost our bearings because we have lost our theology."

Imam Yusuf believes that life could get a lot tougher now he has broken ranks.

"There is a real risk from ignorant people who have no respect for divergent opinions. There are Muslim fascists who are intellectually bankrupt. The only way they can argue is to eliminate the voices they don't agree with.''

The Guardian

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