Did the Imams Lie?

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Feb 15

In the Saturday, February 14, 2015 edition of the Hamilton Spectator was published an article written by Hannah Allam which was an interview of Jocelyne Cesari.  Ms. Cesari directs the Islam and the West program at Harvard University and leads the Berkley Center's Islam and World Politics program at Georgetown University.  The article was distributed by McClatchy Washington Bureau.

Ms. Cesari is clearly an expert in Islam, perhaps more expert than the local imams.  On the basis of her job description she ought to know everything an Islamic scholar would know plus the implications of Islam in the larger world.

What makes this interview interesting is that Jocelyne Cesari directly contradicts what the imams told the Islamic conference, entitled "Who is Mohammed?"

The following is a note I sent to the Spectator editor.  As of this moment it remains unpublished.

There may be hope for the Spectator yet.  In today's Spectator a letter written by Tom Airth of Burlington was published under the title, "It's more than just 'a few radicals.'"  Mr. Airth has been receiving Islamic material from Dr. Raza Khan (of more, see below) and he is greatly unimpressed with the peaceable intentions of Islam and of the capacity of its adherents to live in peace in a western country.  More of that a little later....

First, the comparison of what Jocelyne Cesari says as compared with what the imams said at their recent conference:


Sirs;

This was an interesting and nuanced piece.  The expert quoted in this article, Jocelyne Cesari, said things that were completely at variance with what the local imams said at their Islamic conference last week, the one entitled “Who is Mohammed?”

At the local conference, the imams listed 14 different meanings for the word “jihad,” and specifically denied that “Holy War” was one of them.  Jocelyne Cesari, comes right out in the first question and says that in the Islamic theory of war “The ruler had to declare jihad….”

If Cesari is right, and she has no apparent interest in falsification, then either the local imams lied at the conference for the benefit of the westerners present or they don’t know what they are talking about.  In either case, the local imams were not reliable as experts in the subject in which they spoke.  Westerners could, therefore, take no comfort in their reassurances of the peaceable intentions of Islam.

The second interesting point about Cesari’s analysis is that she observes that the Islamic State does justify its atrocities in Islamic terms.  They do so by “cherry-picking” certain statements, she says. But the essential fact remains that selection and interpretation of Islamic verses are crucial to deciding whether Islam is a religion of peace or a religion of conquest and submission.  Some verses apparently do support ISIS actions, while perhaps others do not.

Condemning ISIS atrocities on the basis of bad form fails to address the core issue.  Imams have to say where and why ISIS is wrong in Islamic terms, and so far as I can tell they do not.  They need to cite the passages of the Koran or the Hadith which clearly show that ISIS actions are condemned or forbidden in Islam; and I don’t see these quotations cited by Muslims.  They condemn bad form, but never individuals for being heretical.

One is left with the belief that the Islamic conference in Hamilton of the previous weekend was completely inadequate in the way it handled the issue of Islamic terrorism.  If Cesari is right then, at best, the imams did not know what they were talking about.  If they lied, then you have to wonder what they were covering up.
-30-