BERG'S MURDER AGAINST ISLAM

News Analysis

By Uwe Siemon-Netto UPI Religious Affairs Editor

WASHINGTON, May 12 (UPI) -- "God is great," the terrorists shouted as they decapitated Nicholas Berg, an American hostage, but Arab and Western specialists on Islam unanimously condemned this crime Wednesday as totally out of line with Islamic faith.

"Even the most literalist interpreters of the Koran must reject the claim that this was a legitimate revenge for the abuse of detainees in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq," said Tariq Ramadan, currently the most prominent spokesman for Muslims in French-speaking countries.

However, the Arab, French, German and North American scholars interviewed agreed that the news of the rape of female prisoners by U.S. soldiers in Abu Ghraib has the potential of overshadowing even this horrible deed.

Pictures of the rape, which were shown to members of the U.S. Senate Wednesday, must never be published, they insisted. "These images would serve as recruiting posters for Osama bin Laden," said Antony T. Sullivan of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Michigan.

Commenting on Berg's murder, Sayyid Sayeed, secretary-general of the Islamic Society of North America declared, "Islam teaches that taking the life of one person is equal to taking the life of all humanity."

"Revenge must not be taken like this," he told United Press International. "No amount of previous animosity can justify killing a civilian who has done nothing wrong."

Blood revenge is a concept Muslims have inherited from pre-Islamic times, explained Christine Schirrmacher, academic director of the Institute for Islamic Affairs in Bonn, Germany.

"However, Islam insists that blood revenge must never be exercised privately but only under official supervision," Schirrmacher continued. According to Ramadan, no official permission was given to Berg's assassins. "How could it? This misdeed was unjustifiable."

Hence the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based advocacy group, condemned "this cold-blooded murder," repudiating "all those who commit such acts of mindless violence in the name of religion."

Schirrmacher, one of Europe's foremost scholars on Islam, said that Berg was perhaps chosen as victim simply because he was Jewish. "There are Muslim theologians who consider all Jews as enemies. In their minds, innocent Jewish civilians simply do not exist."

In her writings, Schirrmacher has pointed out that historically Islam had been more hostile to Judaism than to Christianity, even though parts of the Koran rate both groups "people of the book" deserving special protection, unlike the heathen.

Schirrmacher backed this up with a reference to a text in the Koran: "Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou find the Jews and the pagans; and nearest among them in love to the believers wilt thou find those who say, 'We are Christians.'" (Surah 5:82).

But Sayeed, Ramadan and Mohammed Mohammed Ali, a Shiite scholar from Iraq, insisted that from a Muslim point of view Berg's Jewish identity in no way justified his murder. "No matter what religion Berg was; he was innocent, and killing innocents is forbidden," Ali said in a telephone interview.

While condemning Berg's ghoulish decapitation, the scholars voiced apprehension about the long-term catastrophic potential of the revelation that GI's raped female inmates in Abu Ghraib.

"This is so horrible, one simply cannot imagine what will happen next," commented Schirrmacher. "In Islam, the woman is the bearer of family honor. Even to look at her is a crime."

If the rape pictures were to be seen in Arab and other Muslim countries, "this would equal a nuclear explosion," Antony Sullivan agreed. "They would make the pictures of sexual abuse of men by women look insignificant."

The photographs showing U.S. guards raping female prisoners would strike at the fundamental sanctity of Muslim and Arab culture in a way the other photographs didn't."

According to Sullivan, "Whatever tactical progress the United States has made so far in Iraq, it has just suffered a great strategic defeat."

"The practical consequence will be a tremendous encouragement for terrorists, resistance fighters and avengers to fight Americans at home and around the world."

Sullivan called it "the saddest point that the American public is not aware of the gravity of the situation this country faces. This situation is not up front in their face, but it will be up front sooner or later."

Every summer, Sullivan teaches Arab, Israeli and European students at the International Institute for Political and Economic Studies in Greece. Partly as a result of America's inability to engage with the Islamic world, "it becomes more and more difficult to teach Arabs from the Eastern Mediterranean."

Sullivan said he was wondering how "I can now teach the American values to which I am so deeply committed. In the present circumstances, how can I, a believer in the reconciliation of cultures and religions, operate in the darkness that seems to be enveloping us?"

Ramadan, Ali, Sayeed, Schirrmacher and Douglas Johnston, president of the Washington-based Center for Religion and Diplomacy, echoed this sentiment.

All concurred with Ramadan's desperate outcry: "Please, no more pictures. It's enough!"