BEHEADINGS CAUSE MUSLIMS GRIEF

News Analysis

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

UPI Religious Affairs Editor

Bordeaux, France — June 21, 2004

European specialists on Islamic affairs fear that the beheadings of Americans and other foreigners in the Middle East will trigger a severe anti-Muslim backlash.

“These barbaric acts have been catastrophic for the prospects of Muslims in France,” said Bruno Guiderdoni, a leading French Quran scholar. “A discernible shift has occurred in public attitudes. Its most dangerous aspect is a new hostility—even among once-liberal French intellectuals—toward our religion.”

Two years earlier, a French court acquitted bestselling author Michel Houellebecq of inciting racial hatred for calling Islam “the most stupid religion.” He later clarified: “I have never displayed the least contempt for Muslims. But I have as much contempt as ever for Islam.”

In fall 2003, Claude Imbert, founder of the newsmagazine Le Point, declared: “To be honest, I am somewhat hostile to Islam. I am not embarrassed to admit that.”

To Guiderdoni, such remarks from intellectual elites are alarm signals. Europeans increasingly dismiss reassurances from mainstream Muslim leaders like Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French Council of Muslim Faith, who stated: “Islam is not a religion that beats women, kills kids, and desires the death of the West. What shocks the French is… even more of a shock to us.”

By mid-2004, Muslim extremists had beheaded three Americans and threatened a South Korean and a European journalist—possibly German—with the same fate. This followed the massacre of thousands of women and children in Algeria and ongoing persecution of Christians in Sudan and northern Nigeria.

“Our image is disastrous,” said Guiderdoni, who also serves as research director at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics.

Christine Schirrmacher, head of the Institute on Islamic Affairs in Bonn, Germany, attributes this to the perceived “divided Quran” on human rights and interfaith tolerance.

On one hand, the Quran promotes broad-mindedness toward other faiths, says Sheikh Mohammed Mohammed Ali, a Shiite scholar running for Iraq’s new assembly. On the other, it commands believers to “strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them” (Surah 8:12).

From Baghdad, Ali explained that under Islamic law, decapitation requires approval from a high-ranking scholar—akin to the U.S. Supreme Court. “Nobody in al-Qaida has this competence. None have even attended an Islamic university.”

Yet Islam lacks a centralized authority—no pope, no councils—to definitively condemn such acts. This vacuum allows groups like al-Qaida to act as judge, jury, and executioner, declaring all Westerners “guilty” by association—whether through taxes, military service, or employment.

Guiderdoni warns that moderate “European Islam” is among the first casualties. “Radical Islamists accuse us of treason, while Christians see us as wolves in sheep’s clothing. They distrust us now, convinced we’re trying to lull the West into believing Islam is harmless.”

This dynamic, he fears, cedes ground to extremists. “The West no longer accepts that we have something to contribute. There is no longer any space for moderation.”

Schirrmacher agrees, noting that Christian partners in interfaith dialogue are increasingly abandoned by their own laity, who accuse bishops of naively engaging with unrepresentative or insincere Muslim voices.

In Germany, resentment grows over authorities who dialogue almost exclusively with radicals and appoint them to newly created university chairs in Islamic studies.

“Add to this the public perception of Muslim immigrants as an arrogant, closed community unwilling to learn our language or integrate,” Schirrmacher said. “God forbid terrorism strikes here as it has in the U.S., Spain, or the Middle East. I dread to ponder the consequences.”