But what scares me more is the - in my opinion - accurate and applicable islam-critical opinion by a very intelligent German muslim who left one of the most influential muslim organisations in Germany because they were not "European-peaceful" enough for him.
I would like to translate this German text into English but I do not have enough time for it right now. Maybe, I will do it later and I insert the link now for the interested people here. It is one of the most interesting texts I have ever read from a really honorable German muslim:
https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/2020-10/samuel-paty-mord-islamismus-islam/komplettansicht
A rough translation - basically correcting those errors of Google Translate that butcher the meaning (i.e. Google insists on translating
Verdrängung as
repression, when it acutally means
denial here).
It's an important article because due to the 'standpoint epistemiology' approach that dominates the discourse, the points he makes could otherwise not be raised.
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"It does have something to do with us Muslims."
The murder of Samuel Paty should have been an occasion for Islamic associations to speak out.
Because there is an uncritical attitude towards violence among many Muslims.
A guest contribution by Murat Kayman
Murat Kayman is a lawyer and from 2014 to 2017 was the coordinator of the regional associations of the Islamic umbrella organization Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institute for Religion (Ditib).
After the affair surrounding the activity of imams in Germany, he resigned from his position.
In this guest post, which is based on a long blog entry, he takes a critical look at the lax attitude to violence expressed by many Muslim associations and Muslims after the attack on the Parisian teacher Samuel Paty. Kayman is a co-founder of the Alhambra Society, an association of Muslims who see themselves as Europeans, and a member of the podcast "Dauernörgler² [Perpetual Nagger].
The teacher Samuel Paty only got to be 47 years old. That is my age.
He had to die because he attempted to explain the importance of freedom of expression to his students by way of the example of Mohammed cartoons.
"Had to die" is a trivialization in view of the actual circumstances of the murder. We need to describe more clearly how he was killed, especially as Muslims.
Samuel Paty was not killed or stabbed. He was not strangled or shot. Muslim extremists have described the manner in which he was murdered as the "slaughter" of their victim in similar acts in the past. The perpetrators perform their deed while invoking God. It can be assumed that the murderer of Samuel Paty also wanted to give his motive and his act the meaning of religious retribution, or a divine punishment carried out in representation of God.
[note: The German word used here is specific towards the slaughter of animals in an abbattoir]
A teacher. Freedom of speech. "Slaughtered".
Because of this particular constellation, I watched and waited how Muslim communities and umbrella organizations in Germany would react to this assassination in Paris.
As a Muslim, one would hope that because of this specific situation, influential Muslim organizations at the federal level, such as the T
urkish-Islamic Union of the Institute for Religion (Ditib), the
Islamic Community Millî Görüş (IGMG), the
Central Council of Muslims in Germany (ZMD) or the
Islamic Council, would for once not have remained silent as they have done in so many other cases. After all, what is the value of claiming that one fulfills the characteristics of a religious community, asking to be recognized by the German state, if this claim is not confirmed in word and deed at the crucial moments of our coexistence?
But apart from a few sparse tweets or posts on Facebook, nothing could be read or heard. Even the little that was said followed a dramaturgy that now seems like a ritualized folklore of consternation. These explanations sounded almost annoyed.
It has been declared over and over again over the years that such acts have nothing to do with Islam!
At the end of the day, Islam means peace and Allah alone knows why people suddenly get the idea of cutting others' throats.
I can no longer stand hearing this publicly reproduced ignorant fatalism of the Muslim organizations.
There would be a lot to talk about after such an attack. And many questions. Whether there could be a link between such an act of murder and the Islamic sacrificial rite. The annual festival of sacrifice is touted as a fulfillment of duty and a blessing. Hardly anyone questions this or demands that the slaughter be perceived as a warning reminder of the human potential for violence; as breaking a taboo, namely the killing of a being created by God, which is to remind of the presumptuousness of man and demand humility from him.
Instead, the act of killing, specifically of slaughtering a being helplessly surrendered to humans by means of a throat cut, becomes normalized as an expression of the dominance of the superior over the inferior - the one perhaps unworthy of life?
A dominance that is predictably repeated as a sequence of events in the extremist murders described at the beginning.
The denialism of the associations
In Friday sermons it's repeated endlessly that Islam means peace.
But there are structural problems in the religious everyday life of Muslims, in the associations and communities down to the lowest level, and those who pretend to represent us Muslims and like to present themselves as "large associations" are an important part of these problems, with their strategy of denial. It's about a past life, about patterns of thought and action that create a climate of devaluation and hierarchization, from the umbrella organizations to the communities.
Conditions prevail in which the individual with his or her individual behavior always subordinates himself to a collective acceptance and assures himself of a non-contradicting acceptance and approval by the religious community.
All religions, including Islam, have a potential for peace and a potential for violence. What the religious communities exemplify and pass on as a religiously conformist attitude significantly shapes the question of the direction in which young Muslims in particular are developing.
So when the Muslim association representatives point out, disinterested and frustrated by even having to deal with it, that none of this has anything to do with Islam, we have to counter them:
It has something to do with us Muslims. The violence perpetrated by Muslims has a great deal to do with what Muslims tolerate as acceptable in their communities, what they support, what they do not take as an occasion to object, what even promotes a common identity and what strengthens the feeling of belonging. Because the murderer of Samuel Paty will also have claimed to act as a "good Muslim". The Muslim organizations owe us Muslims and society as a whole an answer to the question why he did not experience his act as a contradiction to this claim.
An uncritical attitude towards violence
In doing so, I cannot turn a blind eye to what we in our Muslim communities acquiesce to without questioning, and accept as recurring patterns of behavior. The point is not that violence is expressly advocated, but there is indeed an uncritical attitude towards violence and a militancy of thought and belief among Muslims that are no longer questioned and are not perceived as contradicting Islam.
In our Muslim communities, violence too often has a place that is accepted as social normality.
In raising children, in the relationship between men and women or as a model of collective, political or identitarian conflicts.
In religious education, for example, the idea of authority and subordination is still widespread, which in case of doubt can also go hand in hand with corporal punishment - physical domination over the physically inferior child is seen as legitimate.
Or if Muslim women who experience emotional or physical violence in marriage seek advice from Muslim communities and associations, it is not uncommon for them to be advised to be patient and to persevere. It is not the violence of the man that counts as religious misconduct or social stigma, but rather the status of a divorced woman.
Relativization of the right to life
In the Muslim umbrella organizations there is a widespread view that their communities are fortresses of Islam in an anti-Muslim Europe; that the wagens need to be circled and well-fortified to defend decency and morality in an ethically depraved society that has indulged in hedonism, promiscuity, homosexuality and, in general, vice.
Because the outside world is so harmful, internal cohesion is particularly important.
The rhetoric therefore often includes reminiscences of the Battle of Uhud in 625. It is considered a metaphorical warning against neglect and recklessness. In this historic battle, the Muslim fighters in Medina were on the verge of defeating their attackers. However, the Muslim archers, driven by the prospect of rich booty, left a strategically important hill and thus lost the victory they believed to be certain. The association officials never tire of conjuring up the image of the Uhud archers when they want to close their own ranks and call for unconditional loyalty.
If such a militarized language is cultivated and historical battles are cited to demonstrate that one will soon be victorious in Germany too, then one should not be surprised that in local mosque communities it is not at all perceived as an educational failure, when toddlers in uniforms and toy rifles take part in re-enactments of historical wars and death to the applause of their enthusiastic parents.
To this day, the understanding of success and power is interwoven with the conquest of former Muslim-ruled areas or symbolic buildings. The al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem fulfills a special function. Their "liberation", which is regularly called for, is directed against Jews who, within the framework of anti-Semitic stereotypes, are imagined as an overpowering enemy and schemer.
The imagination of religious supremacy
The distribution of roles in the Middle East conflict has now assumed a quasi-religious substitute function: the attitude towards this conflict is considered proof of one's own piety. As a "good Muslim" it is very clear what the answer to the crucial question of collective Muslim identity has to be ... "How do you feel about Israel?". Anti-Semitism among Muslims paves the way to the perception and ultimately also to the legitimation of violence as a reaction to injustice suffered. Antisemitism is the framework in which the perception of historical violence against Muslims is cast - and thus as it serves as moral excuse for breaking a religious taboo: killing another person.
It is part of the essence of every religion that it has exclusivist traits. We only find our own narrative of God and creation more believable than that of many other alternative narratives because we grew up with it. However, every religion also contains the provocation of irrationality for its followers. Ideally, these breaking points ensure that the claim to truth of onew's own religion always contains the seed of doubt. Our faith challenges us not only to assert our own claim to truth, but to prove it for everyone through good deeds.
Annihilation instead of acceptance
Someone who exercises violence against others does not want to provide this indirect proof of his beliefs. He wants to avoid the challenge of believing in a contradicting world, instead choosing to annihilate the other. A truly believing person, however, can never imagine himself in possession of a complete truth - and thus in a state of perfection. Perfection is a divine, not a human, attribute.
A Muslim who surrenders himself only to God in daily prayer and only bows down to him, in prayer almost physically, should not really expect any other person to submit to the beliefs and opinions of a Muslim.
But those who believe in categories of supremacy and submission are prone to devaluing other people. Those who take such a path can at some point come to the conviction that the value of a human life depends on a person having the right thoughts and opinions.
As Muslims, we must therefore stop classifying other ways of life and beliefs in a ranking of credibility or value. We must stop condoning narratives of devaluation and exclusion in our communities. We must stop perceiving racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny as acceptable attitudes, even as characteristics of a "normal" or "good" Muslim that serve to create collective identities for us.
Islam is an idea of what God and what the purpose of His creation may be. We Muslims decide every day how we live this idea and thus also whether it will lead us to violence or to peace.
