Song of the Reed

Even though orientalists developed an early and deep fascination for the so-called ‘Whirling Dervishes’ and for the figure and teachings of Balkhi (also known as Rumi, the Roman), the founder and master of this order of dervishes (the Mevlevis), they were unusually slow to bring the works of the Master – the key works of Mevlevi spirituality – into European languages. Portions, samples and selections were translated, but the task of translating entire works, and in particular the voluminous and rambling Mathnawi (Rhyming Couplets) of Rumi, was delayed until well into the Twentieth Century. 

Even then, it was not done especially well. It was not until Nicholson’s eight volume edition of the Couplets was published between 1925 and 1940 that there was a passably decent rendering of this masterwork of Soofism from the original Persian into the English language. 

All the same, Nicholson’s version has its deficiencies; it is scholarly and faithful to the Persian but it often misses the tenor, the flavor, the perfume, of the original. This is not a question of scholarship, but of essence - the spirit, not the letter. In this regard, the works of the Roman are notoriously elusive and difficult to capture. Translations, as such, are typically dry and bloodless and the nearer they are to the Persian the more this is so: often, paraphrases, or “renderings” – loose “translations” - are nearer to the intention and feeling of Rumi’s words. Mevlevi spirituality has a distinct tone, an inner quality that evades lexical exactitude; it is moe a music than a collection of words.

The difficulty of translating Rumi is apparent from the very first few lines of the Mathnawi. There are now dozens of versions of these lines in English but anyone who is acquainted with the true qualities of the Mevlevi path – the spirit rather than the letter - will know how inadequate they are. The problem is precisely that of describing the quality of a piece of music – in this case the music of the reed flute or ney. This breathed instrument, used in Mevlevi ritual, has a beautiful, haunting, mournful quality, and this is exactly the tone of the spirit that moves in Mevlevi spiritual life. But how can it be captured in the far less musical and more prosaic sounds of modern English? The keynote of Mevlevi spirituality is homesickness, the yearning of the soul that is, as St. Paul put it, in the world but not of the world. It is on this note that the Mathnawi begins.

Below are numerous renderings and translations of the first four lines of Rumi’s masterpiece. Some are manifestly horrible. Some have as much grace as entries in a telephone directory. Others might be described as valiant attempts even when they fall well short of anything we might reasonably call poetry. It is only four lines of a work of over 50,000 lines, and yet, as readers will see, no one does it especially well. Again, this is not a question of staying close to the original Persian; it is a question of setting the right tone, hearing the right music, from the outset. To judge this readers should avail themselves of some recordings of the ney flute. The first section of the Mathnawi is the ‘Song of the Reed’ and it speaks of the spirit, the Divine Breath, that animates the ney. Do any of these versions come near to the subtle qualities of the music of the ney?

The argument or the meaning of the four lines can be summarized as follows. Readers will see that many translators and renderers are not even successful in conveying this much:

1. The reader (or listener) is urged to listen to the reed and to hear its complaint or lament.

2. The reed speaks. It explains that its music has moved men and women to a deep sadness because it, the reed, has been torn from the reed bed and is homesick.

3. The reed says that it wants or needs listeners whose hearts are similarly torn by separation and homesickness. They will understand its song.

4. The reed makes the general statement that everyone who is exiled from their home longs to return.

* * * 

NICHOLSON

Listen to the reed how it tells a tale, complaining of separations—
Saying, “Ever since I was parted from the reed-bed, 

my lament, has caused man and woman to moan.
I want a bosom torn by severance,
that I may unfold the pain of love-desire.
Every one who is left far from his source
wishes back the time when he was united with it.


JONES 1772

Hear, how yon reed in sadly pleasing tales
Departed bliss and present woe bewails!
'With me, from native banks untimely torn,
Love-warbling youths and soft-ey'd virgins mourn.
O! Let the heart, by fatal absence rent,
Feel what I sing, and bleed when I lament.
Who roams in exile from his parent bow'r,
Pants to return, and chides each ling'ring hour.

REDHOUSE 1881

From reed-flute hear what tale it tells;
What plaint it makes of absence' ills.
"From jungle-bed since me they tore,
Men's, women's, eyes have wept right sore.
My breast I tear and rend in twain,
To give, through sighs, vent to all my pain.
Who's from his home snatched far away,
Longs to return some future day.

WHINFIELD 1887

Hearken to the reed-flute, how it complains,
Lamenting its banishment from its home:--
"Ever since they tore me from my osier bed,
My plaintive notes have moved men and women to tears.
I burst my breast, striving to give vent to sighs,
And to express the pangs of my yearnings for my home.
He who abides far away from his home
Is ever longing for the day he shall return.

ARBERRY 1961

Listen to this reed, how it makes complaint,
telling a tale of separation:
"Ever since I was cut off from my reed-bed,
men and women all have lamented my bewailing.
I want a breast torn asunder by severance,
so that I may fully declare the agony of yearning.
Every one who is sundered far from his origin
longs to recapture the time when he was united with it.

TURKMAN 1992

Listen to this Ney (the reed-flute) that is complaining
and narrating the story of separation.
Ever since they (the people) have plucked me from the reedland,
my laments have driven men and women to deep sorrow.
I want someone with a chest (heart) pierced by abandonment so that I may tell him about the pain of my longing.
He who falls aloof from his origin
seeks an opportunity to find it again.

GUPTA 1997

O man! Hear the flute (an instrument made out of reeds)
which in wistful tone complains of being separated from its native
place, the reed-bed.
"From the moment they cut me off from my source,
I have been wailing, which has moved everyone, man or woman, who heard me, to tears.
"I wish my heart to be torn into pieces so that they could tell the tale of pangs of my separation and of my
longing for going back from where I came.
"Anyone who is thus removed from his spring,
waits every moment for an opportunity of returning to it.

HELMINSKI

Listen to the reed and the tale it tells,
how it sings of separation:
Ever since they cut me from the reed bed,
my wail has caused men and women to weep.
I want a heart that is torn open with longing
so that I might share the pain of this love.
Whoever has been parted from his source
longs to return to that state of union.

SHAHRIARI 1998

Pay heed to the grievances of the reed
Of what divisive separations breed
From the reedbed cut away just like a weed
My music people curse, warn and heed
Sliced to pieces my bosom and heart bleed
While I tell this tale of desire and need.
Whoever who fell away from the source
Will seek and toil until returned to course.

NASR 2000

Listen to the reed how it narrates a tale,
A tale of all the separations of which it complains.
Ever since they cut me from the reed-bed,
Men and women bemoaned my lament.
How I wish in separation, a bosom shred and shred,
So as to utter the description of the pain of longing.
Whoever becomes distanced from his roots,
Seeks to return to the days of his union.

GAMARD 2000

Listen to the reed (flute), how it is complaining!
It is telling about separations,
(Saying), "Ever since I was severed from the reed field,
men and women have lamented in (the presence of) my shrill cries.
"(But) I want a heart (which is) torn, torn from separation,
so that I may explain the pain of yearning."
"Anyone one who has remained far from his roots,
seeks a return (to the) time of his union.

LEWIS 2000

Listen as this reed pipes its plaint
unfolds its tale of separations:
Cut from my reedy bed my crying
ever since makes men and women weep
I like to keep my breast
carved with loss to convey the pain of longing.

Once severed from the root,
thirst for union with the source endures

LEGENHAUSEN

Listen to this reed as it complains,
As it tells of separations in its strains:
Ever since I was torn from the land in which I grew
Men have been weeping to my piping, men and women, too.
I want a breast torn apart by parting
So I can tell it of the pain that accompanies my longing.
Whoever stays too long away from his own country
Searches for reunion, and his search is made daily.

TAMDGIDI 2003

Listen to how this reed is wailing;
About separations it's complaining:
"From reedbed since parted was I,
Men, women, have cried from my cry.
"Only a heart, torn-torn, longing
Can hear my tales of belonging.
"Whosoever lost her/his essence,
For reuniting seeks lessons.

TILLINGHAST AND SHAFAK

Listen, how this flute complains; how it tells of estrangement.
It says: Ever since they cut me from my reedy bed, 

men have cried and wailed when I cried - and women too.
I want a heart wounded by separation, so I can tell the pain of
longing.
He who is cut off from his essence looks for the time of reunion.

MOJADDEDI 2004

Now listen to this reed-flute's deep lament
About the heartache being apart has meant:
'Since from the reed-bed they uprooted me
My song's expressed each human's agony,
A breast which separation's split in two
Is what I seek, to share this pain with you:
When kept from their true origin, all yearn
For union on the day they can return.

WILLIAMS 2006

Listen to this reed as it is grieving;
it tells the story of our separations.
'Since I was severed from the bed of reeds,
in my cry men and women have lamented.
I need the breast that's torn to shreds by parting
to give expression to the pain of heartache.
Whoever finds himself left far from home
looks forward to the day of his reunion.

HOLBROOK 2010

Listen to this reed flute as it tells its tales
Complaining of separations as it wails:
"Since they cut my stalk away from the reed bed
My outcry has made men and women lament
I seek a breast that is torn to shreds by loss
So that I may explicate the pain of want
Everyone who's far from his own origin
Seeks to be united with it once again

SADRI 2015

Listen to the reed-flute as it complains,
The tale of separations it explains.
"Ever since they tore me off the reed bed's bowels,
My wailing has moved man and woman to howls.
I want a bosom, by separation's agony torn, torn,
So I may speak of the yearnings' pain I have borne.
He who is separated from his quintessence,
Will seek the times of his re-acquaintance.


Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Labyrinth in Lucknow

While Benares, where the author has been for the last month, is a resoundingly Hindoo city, Lucknow, further to the north, is the premiere city of Shia Mahometans in India. The author journeyed there over the New Year. It was once the capital of the great fiefdom of the Nawab of Ood and has a distinctive culture celebrated for its fine manners and genteel ambience. Today, of course, it is a sprawling Indian mess but much of the old city, marked by various medieval gates, is still intact. In particular, the central mosques and the great centre of Shi'ite learning - the Imambara (theological college) - is especially well-preserved and an inspiring complex of architecture that is quite different to that of the (Sunni) Moghuls. The Nawabs of Ood were cultured and benevolent, if indulgent, men and embarked upon vast building projects, reputedly as a means of providing work for their hungry citizens during lean times. 

View from the roof of the Imambara

The truly unique feature of the Imambara (the big one, not the smaller complex further down the road, also called 'Imambara'), and reason enough to visit there, is in the ceiling of its main hall. The architect, Khifayatullah, has seen fit to build an elborate labyrinth (more correctly, it's a maze) into the upper levels of the building, supposedly to thwart would-be intruders. It is said that only he and the Nawab knew the path through it. Today it is open to the public, and the author spent several hours of a warm winter afternoon - New Year's Day - stumbling around in the tangle of halls and corridors and stairways that constitute the 'Bhul Bhulaiya' as it is known. 

During the daytime it is not impossibly difficult to navigate, since one can follow the light and keep taking paths back to the outside of the building, but during the night it would be diabolical. Many corridors lead to dead ends, but others lead to precipitous drops. As it is, the author found himself completely lost within a few turns and on several occasions had to return to the roof of the building to re-orient himself. As a labyrinth it is certainly effective and mysterious, even if on Friday afternoons - after the communal prayer, which is when the author was there - it is crowded with groups of teenagers squealing and giggling at the thrill of being lost. 

The following are some of the author's pictures of the labyrinth and should give readers a sense of the structure. There are, they say, some 500 doorways in the complex. The labyrinth works by offering stairwells up or down at strategic places. If you take the stairs up when you should have taken them down, you're lost. 

The Rage Against History

It is only rarely that this web log hosts an article by another author, but the following article by Emeritus Professor Clive Kessler, an Australian academic, is worthy of reposting here because it articulates much of the thesis proposed by the present author in various of his previous posts and writings elsewhere. This thesis is the 'Rage Against History' thesis which Professor Kessler uses to analyse contemporary Mahometan jihadism and which the present author has used as a more general tool for understanding Islamic/West tensions in all their manifestations. Professor Kessler's position is correct, as far as it goes, but to it we must add the observation that Islamic/West conflicts are, in reality, "a battle raging in a single system", as the Algerian scholar Hichem Bait once remarked. Much of Western history has been a "rage against history" too. Indeed, it is exactly this rage that has shaped modernity. It extends, that is to say, far deeper, and with many more subtleties and permutations, than Professor Kessler intimates in this article. 

The Crusades, for instance, were a "rage against history" in defiance of the fact that Islamic civilisation was, in the Middle Ages, vastly superior to Christian civilisation on almost every count. Christians found such an historical situation intolerable. Thus the rage. But now, as Kessler right observes, the tables have been turned. He coins the useful term "post-Christian Christendom" in this article - for it was by transcending its own Christian identity that "Christendom" (i.e. Europe) was able to outmanoeuvre the Mahometans and set history right again - an extraordinary ironical outcome. The 'Rage Against History' occurs when a civilisation - Christian or Islamic in these instances - feels that there is a profound dissonance between earth and heaven, when history and destiny are at odds. How could God tolerate the Mahometan Infidels - followers of the blasphemous pretender, Mahomet - ruling the world and humiliating the Christians? The Crusades, the Reformation, many upheavals in European history are a rage-filled response to this travesty. 

But, as Professor Kessler correctly observes, this same rage now infects the Islamic world, for Christian Europe triumphed, the great empires of Islam fell into terminal decline, and now the Muslims feel aggrieved that heaven and earth, history and destiny, are out of step. Jihadism is exactly a rage-filled response to that. How could Allah tolerate the Christian Infidels - idolators who worship a man as a God!, or who in their modern decadence worship no god at all - ruling the world and humiliating the blessed Ummah? Is it not written that the Prophet's Ummah is destined to be the best of peoples? The question for contemporary Mahometans is how to set history right again. This is the context - the 'Rage Against History ' - in which the jihadism phenomenon needs to be seen. It is a mirror image - an historical recoil - of the same phenomenon that drove the 'Cordoba Martyrs' in the Middle Ages, when Christians in Spain on suicide missions would walk into mosques and denounce the Prophet of Islam, or when Crusaders, marching overland from Europe, were reduced to cannabalism such was their rage against the Saracens. 

In his own work the present author has expanded the 'Rage against History' to a general thesis of Islamic/west interaction. He is happy to find the consonant views of Professor Kessler, who gives the thesis a more limited scope and is here concerned with the "national challenge" in Australia. Let it be noted that insightful, intelligent commentary on these matters from academics is very rare. Our universities are now infected with the sort of activism that produces brainless terms like 'Islamophobia'. While there are points in this article with which the present author might disagree, Professor Kessler is a welcome voice of insight into both Islam and history and also a welcome voice against the politically correct academic mindset that is destroying universities and preventing academics - like politicians and other commentators - from offering astute and useful analysis of these issues. 

The article below first appeared in the New Mandala website hosted by the Australian National University and was reprinted by the Australian newspaper. 

* * * 

ISLAM CANNOT DISOWN JIHADISTS DRIVEN BY RAGE AGAINST HISTORY

The Ottawa parliament, the Lindt cafe, Charlie Hebdo and so many others, too. These are all separate incidents, but they are all part of the same global phenomenon. They are expressions of a rage against history that lurks within modern Islam and is animating militant Muslims worldwide. It is a rage that has its source within the wounded soul of contemporary Islamic civilisation.

The Muslim religion and its social world have an intensely political tradition. It has always been so, going back to Mohammed’s dual role as prophet and political leader in the original Islamic community in Madina from AD622 to 632. Within a century of Mohammed’s death his small desert polity, in what is now Saudi Arabia, had become a vast transcontinental empire. And in a succession of different political frameworks (“caliphates”), the community of Mohammed’s faithful continued to live in the world on its own founding assumptions.

For 1000 years, Islamic civilisation flourished. Not only able to live in the world on its own terms, it could also set those terms to others who came within its orbit. It was to be accepted by all, lovingly or in obligatory submission. How has the world of Islam justified this to itself?

Religiously, Islam sees itself as the successor to the Abrahamic faiths of ethical, prophetic monotheism. It sees itself as completing Judaism and then Christianity: faiths of the “peoples of the book”, or genuine scripture. Completing, but also repairing and then superseding those earlier revelations, making good their limitations and deficiencies.

What deficiencies? First, those earlier revelations, so mainstream Islam holds, were incomplete. And second, in their human transmission, what God had revealed through them had been distorted and corrupted by its custodians, the rabbis and priests. Islam sees itself as complete because it sees itself, unlike Judaism and Christianity, as equipped with a fully developed social and political blueprint, a divinely prescribed plan for the organisation and political management of society.

For this reason, its mainstream scholars have long held, Islam incorporates and carries forward all that is right and good in Judaism and Christianity. And what is not good or authentic, Islam rejects; what it has rejected is simply wrong. Obsolete: relics from an earlier era of human spiritual and social evolution.

This was not just religious doctrine; these ideas informed and even defined the historical civilisation founded on Islamic faith. But this attitude or worldview could continue undisturbed only so long as it was not evidently counterfactual. So long as the worldly career of Islamic civilisation remained a success story.

And it was, for 1000 years. Islam survived the challenge of its great trans-Mediterranean civilisational rival, the world of Christendom, withstanding even the era of the Crusades. But eventually it succumbed to what we might call “post-Christian Christendom”, or Europe and the Western world.

The long crisis that the Islamic world, in the form of the Ottoman Empire or caliphate, entered was dramatically signalled at the end of the 18th century by Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt. During the following century, the world of Islam was overwhelmed. Its collapse and humiliation was accomplished by what we now call “modernity” — social, economic, administrative, technical, military, intellectual and cultural. It was defeated and routed by the application of modern attitudes and techniques, born of the Enlightenment and the new scientific revolution, that the European powers commanded and developed and began to deploy ever more thoroughly. And which the world of Islam lacked.

By the late 19th and early 20th century, much of the Islamic world had fallen under European colonial domination. It was dismembered and parcelled out among different Western powers — notably France, Britain, Italy and The Netherlands (also Russia).

No longer able to live in the world on their own terms according to their blueprint, the lands of Islam fell under derivatively foreign legal systems. They ceased to live, wherever they once had, under Islamic law, the Shariah.

This defeat was humiliating. The world of Islam was wounded at its core. This would have been a painful experience for any once-proud but now enfeebled civilisation. But for Islam it was more, and worse, than that. It was more and worse because of its long ­history of worldly success and its conviction of entitlement, an assurance vouchsafed by God, that Islam would forever be in charge.

The sudden lack of congruence or “fit” between this conviction of Islam’s civilisational primacy, with its assurance of enduring political ascendancy, and the abject condition of its lands under colonialism inflicted a deep wound within the heart of the modern Islamic world.

It posed a conundrum: if Islam alone were the completed and perfected religion of God — and if its political completeness was the basis for its long-lasting worldly success, which itself was proof of its religious superiority — then why was it now so comprehensively defeated and impotent? What had gone wrong?

The history of modern Islam has largely been the story of failed attempts to overcome this cognitive dissonance. This has taken many forms. First, religious modernism and reform. Then, fitted with an Islamic face, all of the modern age’s great new ideologies were repackaged and trialled for Muslims in Islamic terms: liberal constitutionalism, nationalism, socialism, secularism, statism and military authoritarianism. All failed to deliver what was hoped of them: a restoration of power and sovereignty and dignity.

Out of their failure came a new but old approach: a return to religion, to the belief that Islam is not the problem but the solution. That Islam has not failed the world’s Muslims but that they have failed Islam, failed to understand and live by it properly. For some, back to the Shariah. For some, even, restore the caliphate, a form of Islamic sovereignty capable of enforcing the Shariah.

This is the basis of the reaffirmation and religious resurgence of Islam during the past half-century — to restore Islam and Muslims to their rightful historical standing. Resurgent Islam, in its benign and also its more activist and militant forms, is the latest attempt to heal this deep wound. This frames the religious and historical consciousness of most believing, loyal and sensitive modern Muslims, moderates and radicals.

Though they may be only a minority, the radical Muslims, or militant Islamists, do not merely feel the pain of this wound. They also seek to act forcefully to “set things right again”, driven by a conviction that “history has taken a wrong turn”. This is the “rage against history”.

The violent restorationists of Islam’s glory may be marginal, even outsiders, to mainstream Islam. But that is no basis for mainstream Islamic society and its leadership to reject and disown them as “not us, and not our problem”.

What the jihadi militants do is done explicitly in the name of Islam. They find, and not capriciously, justification for what they choose to do within the sacred and historical traditions of Islam, within some authentic parts of that tradition at least. And they are responding to and acting on a profound sense of crisis and grievance that lies within the heart of modern Muslim historical experience.

It will simply not do to cut these violent people loose, allowing them to do as they please, by saying “what they do has nothing to do with Islam”. It has everything to do with Islam. There is no other way to explain it . What the violent militants do may have little to do with “Islam as decent, progressive people choose to understand it”. But it exists within, feeds off, and is explicable only within Islam and Islamic terms.

Those Muslims who wish to repudiate the action of the militants must assert themselves emphatically within Islam. And they must assert their control over how Islam is seen by their non-Muslim fellow citizens, over its “brand”.

Simply acting “behind closed doors”, with intra-community diplomacy, will not suffice. True, there is no way this will be solved without Muslims playing the primary role, but this is not just an internal problem. What goes on in the world of Islam today, as recent gruesome events worldwide have repeatedly shown , is everybody’s business.

An adequate Muslim response cannot rest solely on issuing fatwas and similar religious condemnations of the militants and their atrocities as an offence against Islam. What they do is an offence, and much worse, against all of us.

The Islamic community leaders must do more. They must constantly deepen their own and their community’s commitment to modern, liberal, democratic and pluralist values, principles and forms of action. And others, their fellow citizens, have the right to expect and ask this of them.

After the Lindt Cafe and the terrible events in Paris the question must be posed: “And what do we need to do now?” There are two parts to the answer.

One part has to do with Muslims. Nobody wants, or should want, to see our Muslim fellow citizens — as a group, or “picked off” as individuals on public transport or in the street — targeted, scapegoated, vilified, marginalised or isolated. We don’t, or should not, want that to happen to them for their sakes, and also for the sake of Australia. Neither the society as a whole nor any part of it stands to benefit should that kind of division, antagonism and scapegoating occur, or be condoned. So, if people want to do the hashtag “I’ll ride with you”, wave pens or proclaim “Je suis Charlie”, fine. However sentimental and inadequate, it is a nice gesture of inclusion, of human fellow feeling, a good symbolic (and also practical) affirmation of common citizenship and humanity.

But just because these paltry things may make some of us feel good should not persuade us that this is the core of the problem or its principal remedy. The second part of the answer has to do with the faith-based community of Islam.

What this means is that, if we are to try to minimise the occurrence of such episodes, we need to understand them better. To do that, the main task is not to follow the all-too simplistic approach of the “counter-terrorism” and “de-radicalisation” experts who, as social psychologists, treat the problem as basically one of individual psychology (perhaps in a “group context”).

Approaching the problem as if it might be treated in that way appeals to the politicians because it suggests or holds out the hope that some direct remedy or technical fix is available.

But ultimately, the problem here is not one of fragile, malleable — but remediable — individual psychology. It has to do with the Islamic historical tradition: with its inherent tensions, its unresolved problems, with what it finds difficult to acknowledge and resolve within itself.

Whether “legitimately” or not in the eyes of more decent folk, that is where the militant and ­violent activists look to, where they draw their motivation and justification.

It is from their reading (or mis-reading) and their use (or misuse) of Islam’s civilisational transcript that these monsters draw their inspiration, as well as the supposed justification for their appalling ­actions.

If such things happened only rarely, what we all face would be a different matter. But it is not uncommon. It is not even some sort of “groundhog day” affliction, an annual cause of occasionally returning distress.

It has become constant and recurrent: nonstop in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East such as Yemen, and beyond as with Boko Haram in Nigeria and in Somalia and Kenya, and with the mass slaughter of schoolchildren by the Taliban in Pakistan; and now, all too frequently, it is repeated closer to us, whether in a museum in Belgium, in the Ottawa parliament, in Sydney’s Lindt Cafe or in Paris.

It floods in upon us, like US basketball games or our one-day international cricket matches over the summer. You barely have the time to think about the one that has just happened than there is another one, scarcely distinguishable from its predecessor, demanding your attention. It just goes on.

Parents and communities, including community schools and educators, that have not thought this problem through adequately themselves are in no position to guide and educate their children and younger generations on how to manage this crisis within the Islamic world.

It is the problem of getting a faith community to acknowledge the equivocal and dubious, as well as the glorious and heroic, components of its own heritage.

“Treatment” at the individual level can never succeed unless this deeper, even fundamental, problem of the Islamic faith community in Australia and globally is acknowledged — by Muslims, starting with their educational and moral and political leadership, and by others, notably our nation’s “opinion-leaders” and politicians.

We should and must be welcoming and inclusive towards all our citizens as part of, and who wish to share in, our processes of democratic sociability, including (no more or less than anybody else) our fellow citizens of Islamic religious, historical, cultural and civilisational background.

No more and no less … and with no uniquely reserved “Islamophobia” card to play.

Remember: a phobia is an ungrounded and unfounded, an irrational and an obsessive attitude, a pathology. People these days alas have genuine grounds to feel apprehensive.

So, please, no more using — or putting up with — the catchcry of “Islamophobia” as a specially ­protected moral bludgeon to ­silence all serious, responsible discussion of the Islamic tradition and history.

We are all in this appalling situation together. We must think and act accordingly, our national political life and debates must reflect that fact, and our national political leaders must face the matter squarely and not be content with unhelpful banalities and misleading platitudes.

We should no longer be admonished by a responsible minister that Islam is simply “a religion of peace … and anybody who suggest otherwise is talking arrant nonsense”.

We need far better than that if we are ever to face and overcome this national challenge.

The Mealy-Mouthed Mufti

If anyone doubts the extent of delusion and denial among those who purport to be leaders of contemporary Islam, let them consider the following disgraceful statement issued by the Grand Mufti of Australia in the wake of the barbaric murders of innocent civilians in Paris on November 13th 2015. The Mufti has rightly come under fire for the wording of this statement, and some have called for his immediate resignation. A retraction or resignation is unlikely; instead there is an attitude of defiant and self-indulgent ignorance that pervades the office of the Mufti and that further characterizes Mahometan officialdom throughout Australia. It is not confined to Australia, though. It permeates Islam as a whole, beginning with its leaders and representatives and seeping down to the average Saracen in the street. The rot starts at the top. It radiates out from Mecca and typifies everything that is wrong with contemporary Islam. 

The events in Paris are infamous enough: there is no need to rehearse what happened, who was killed, by whom, or the nature of the barbarism. But readers should consider the following statement by His Eminence, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, and in particular note the statement highlighted in red. 

Let us consider it. What are the “causative factors” that are creating terrorism and that are preventing strategies to stop terrorism? They are, according to the Mufti:

1. Racism
2. Islamophobia
3. The curtailing of freedoms through securitisation
4. Duplicitous foreign policies
5. Military intervention

So, apparently, the causes of terrorism are all matters which are being inflicted upon Muslims. Muslims are the victims. Muslims themselves are not to blame. Islam itself is not to blame. There are no problems or faults within the Islamic Ummah itself that have not been imposed by non-Muslims. There is no reason for Muslims to reflect upon their own interpretations of their faith, on where modern Islam has gone wrong, or on the structures and ideologies that prevail in their communities. No. Muslims, according to the Mufti, are the victims. Muslims are being pushed into terrorism by others. Nothing can be done about terrorism until critics of Islam are silenced.

Note that there is no direct condemnation of those who perpertrated the massacre in Paris. There is no statement condemning the ISIS organization as unIslamic. And there is no statement demanding that Muslims everywhere conduct some appropriate soul-searching to root out the evil of fundamentalism from contemporary Islamic religiosity. Instead, the Mufti’s statement lays the blame on others. Terrorism is a reaction to racism. Terrorism is a reaction to “Islamophobia” – whatever that may be. Terrorism is a reaction to security and policing. Terrorism is a reaction to the Australian government’s foreign policies and, by some strange paradoxic, Australia's military engagement against terrorists in the Middle East. (Is the Mufti really saying 'We can't do anything about terrorism until you stop bombing ISIS in Syria?!!!') 

Unless this mealy-mouthed Mufti condemns the attacks in Paris - without reservation - he should resign. His response to the Paris atrocities is completely unacceptable. He promotes an ideology of victimhood rather than confronting the poison that is infecting contemporary Islam. He is part of the problem. He deserves to be condemned and he has shown himself not to be fit for the high office he holds.

(We might also note at this time that the Mufti - supreme representative of Muslims in Australia - cannot or will not speak English. It speaks volumes in itself that Mahometan officialdom in Australia has appointed a non-English speaker as their figurehead. There is no serious effort to engage with mainstream Australia.)

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What might His Eminence have said instead? Several correspondents have asked the present author what response Muslim authorities should have given? It is, of course, not the business of this author to do the job of the Office of the Mufti or the National Council of Imams, but he offers the following as one possible appropriate wording. It is not, as they say, rocket science. The Mufti's Media Statement might well have been worded as follows:

His Eminence, the Grand Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, and the Australian National Imams Council, mourn the loss of innocent lives due to the recent terrorist attacks in France. Almost 130 people were tragically killed and more than 350 injured.

We would like to convey our deepest condolences to the families and friends of the deceased.

We reiterate that the sanctity of human life is guaranteed in Islam. We condemn, without reservation, all those involved in these evil and barbaric deeds and denounce any Muslims, in Australia or abroad, who offer support to those responsible. Acts of terror have no justification and are profoundly un-Islamic in every respect. Those who perpetrate such acts face the displeasure of Allah Almighty and the punishment of the hellfire. They can in no way be regarded as martyrs.

We regret, once again, that radical and extremist ideologies have taken root in some sections of the Islamic Ummah and we vow to work tirelessly to completely eliminate such perverse ideologies from our own community. We assure the Australian people that we will cooperate with the Australian government and law enforcement to take all necessary steps to remove the doctrine of hatred and terror from within Australian Islam, to prevent any material support for terrorism here or abroad, and to protect innocent Australians from all acts of terror and religious violence.

We ask the Australian people to distinguish between the great majority of Muslims who are peaceloving and a small minority of deluded heretics who are misled by narratives of victimhood and blind hatred that have no basis in fact. We call upon all people of good will to stand with the peaceloving majority and to help us cleanse contemporary Islam of this terrible cancer.

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Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black