TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Last week, as news of the attack on the offices of magazine Charlie Hebdo broke, Dr. Mahmoud Ziadeh was busy following up on the situation in Paris. He flipped between French television channels before grabbing the phone to check up on his children, who live in France’s capital.
The francophone academic, who was once the director of the faculty of arts at the Lebanese University in Tripoli, came back to Lebanon a few days before the incident, and he fears that Arabs and Muslims are going to pay the price for Islamist extremism.
He had lived in Paris since he went there as a student in 1969. Despite his support for the Arab nationalist movement and the Palestinian cause, he said he never felt out of place or unwanted.
“We were part of a vibrant, active society in France,” he said. “As Muslims, we never felt any discrimination. On the contrary, we considered ourselves part of one intellectual body that calls for justice and respect for human rights.”
“However, today things are completely different. Half of French society is now made up of immigrants coming from conflict zones in the world which has led to an increase in discrimination by the French.”
Ziadeh sent his children to France because the situation there was better than here in Lebanon, but now, in the wake of the Hebdo incident, he’s not so sure it’s the right decision. A friend of his son, he said, recently decided not to take a train from Paris to Lyon out of fear of another attack.
Both Paris and Tripoli are reeling from terror attacks, he said, pointing at the deadly twin suicide bombing at a cafe in Jabal Mohsen the other week.
“Terrorism does not discriminate between a Muslim, a Christian or an atheist, and that’s the dilemma that we need to work to resolve now. Terrorism is not limited to our Middle Eastern societies, but is also preying on the mind of the West.”
The Paris assault and the attack in Jabal Mohsen have exposed a deep-running problem regarding extremist Islamists.
This has prompted many Islamist intellectuals in the north of Lebanon to question their position amid the growing power of extremist groups such as ISIS and Nusra Front, both in the region and in Lebanon, particularly in the north.
Their doubts are especially strong given the declining influence of the Muslim Scholars Committee, their head Sheikh Salem Rafei, and the founder of the Salafist Movement in northern Lebanon, Sheikh Dai al-Islam al-Shahhal.
It is no exaggeration to say that not only have ISIS and other extremist groups gained control of various parts of Syria and Iraq, but that their reach is felt in many more places as a result of the number of smaller groups that are pledging allegiance to them.
Tripoli is a clear example of this, from the presence of fundamentalists Shadi Mawlawi and Osama Mansour, who have suspected links to ISIS, to the Jabal Mohsen bombings, which was claimed by the Nusra Front.
This situation is exacerbated by the lack of a president, the government’s stagnation and the poverty and social marginalization experienced by many in the city, providing fertile ground for extremist groups looking for new recruits for attacks such as that in Jabal Mohsen.
Sheikh Mahmoud al-Sheikh believes that the source of this recent wave of extremist Islamic ideology is down to Muslims feeling as if they are treated unjustly in their respective societies.
Sheikh stopped studying for his degree at the American University of Beirut to be part of the Islamist movement that was gaining ground in Tripoli back in 1985. These days, he works in Dar al-Fatwa, the country’s highest Sunni body, visiting prisons and giving religious advice to inmates. He points to security-related developments as having distorted the image of Islam as a religion of forgiveness.
Muslims, he said, should work on communicating the true meaning of Islam. Religion is all about how we treat one another, he added, and any injustices Muslims feel they are being subjected to should not be an excuse for such violence.
Muslims should instead explain the injustices they are suffering, he said, using words not weapons.
Another sheikh from Dar al-Fatwa in Tripoli blames the absence of a strong religious authority for the rise in extremism.
“How can a highly qualified sheikh play the role he should when he is only being paid LL2,500 or some other shameful amount by Dar al-Fatwa for each session of religious instruction to spread the message [against extremism] in mosques?” asked the sheikh, who declined to be identified.
“It’s very important to first fix the religious institutions, and then focus on proper religious education, as it’s not right to incorrectly explain Islamic texts.”
Dar al-Fatwa’s position centers on the need for Muslims to rise above provocations.
“These acts [in Paris] are suspicious and we condemn them. They are a crime against Islam and its Prophet, because the Prophet of mercy, the Prophet of Islam – Mohammad – did not teach us to face aggression with aggression,” said Sheikh Hasan Merheb, general inspector at Dar al-Fatwa.
“Those who insulted the Prophet Mohammad with drawings and pictures wanted to provoke Muslims who love their Prophet, so that their emotions would drive them to create strife,” he added.
“This, in turn, taints the reputation of Muslims and Islam and leads them to facing restrictions.”
This lack of trust in and curtailing of freedoms for Muslims is exactly what far right groups in Europe were calling for, Merheb said. “Extremist groups are the greatest danger to Islam, even more than Islam’s enemies.”
There are other options that would have been just as effective to protest the magazine’s decision to run pictures of Prophet Mohammad, he continued, and that would not have negatively affected Islam’s image.
The same goes for Jabal Mohsen, Merheb said. “It’s not acceptable that such a terrorist attack would take place in the name of Islam. This is shameful.”
Praising Sheikh Abdel-Latif Derian, he said the grand mufti had done much to contain tensions in the Muslim community in Lebanon and combat extremism. “Derian has proven his wisdom in this issue.”
But he also admitted that the body faced many difficulties: “Dar al-Fatwa is facing a lot of big challenges in terms of developing itself as a religious institution in the wake of the dangers of extremism, which no logical and Islamic mind could accept.”
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