Antoine
Sfeir has established a reputation as an authority
on Islam. Born in Lebanon in 1948 he is a journalist,
a professor and a writer living in France. Between
1968 and 1976 he worked in the foreign department
of the newspaper L'Orient - le Jour, which
specialised in Middle Eastern affairs. In 1977,
he helped create the newspaper J'informe.
As the director of the Eastern Journals he
has worked for more that 30 years on the Arab and
Muslim worlds. In addition to editing the Atlas
of Religions he has written The Money of
the Arabs and The Networks of Allah: The
Islamic Affiliates in France and in Europe.
His
opinions are much sought after at a time when Islam
is Europe's fastest-growing religion. Of any European
country France has the highest number of Muslims,
around five million, who are ministered by up to
1500 imams, 90 % of whom did not arrive in the country
through the books. French authorities have viewed
this as problematical and have opted to devise measures
aimed at bringing home-grown imams through in a
bid to curb the rise of theocratic fascism often,
seemingly, promulgated by foreign imams.
Sfeir's
opposition to this form of fascism has placed him
at the forefront of many disputes with its apologists.
When Ayman Zawahri, described by Sfeir as 'the veritable
brain of Al-Qaeda', equated the French headscarf
ban with 'the burning of villages in Afghanistan,
the destruction of houses over the heads of their
inhabitants in Palestine, the massacre of children
and the theft of oil in Iraq' Sfeir described it
as 'an incitement to terrorist action.' He felt
that Zawahri was intent on using the issue to mobilise
Muslims throughout Europe.
In 2003 Tariq Ramadan, Swiss professor of Philosophy
and Islamology bought a prosecution against Sfeir
after the latter had written that Ramadan's pronouncements
had influenced French Muslims in Lyon to go and
fight in Afghanistan. Ramadan lost the legal battle
when the Lyon appeal court found that preachers
in the mould of Ramadan 'may have an influence on
the young Islamists and constitute a factor of incitation
that could lead them to join the partisans of violent
measures.' Although Time magazine has described
Ramadan as 'the leading Islamic thinker among Europe's
second and third-generation Muslim immigrants',
Sfeir has accused him of being a dangerouis opponent
of moderate Muslims. Along with Caroline Fourest,
a co-signatory of the Manifesto
against Totalitarianism, Sfeir has sought to
highlight what he regards as Ramadan's real agenda.
Many French intellectuals have alleged this to be
invidious double discoursing, anti-Semitism, sexism
and reactionary politics. Despite this, in 2005,
British Prime Minister Tony Blair invited Ramadan
to sit on a government taskforce which would examine
the roots of fundamentalism within the UK.
Alongside
its admirable secularism and separation of church
from state, there has existed within France an inexcusable
rampant racism with no shortage of politicians willing
to stoke up the tensions for their own ends. The
racism is also exploited by political Islam intent
on establishing a reactionary bulwark.
A
French police report suggested that thirty imams
in Paris and its surrounding suburbs were pushing
this agenda. Between 2001 and 2004, 27 prayer leaders
had been expelled from the country because of incitement.
The 27th received his marching orders after he told
his flock the Koran permitted men to beat their
wives and that women should be stoned if they were
unfaithful to their husbands. Just prior to this
expulsion another imam had asked his followers to
'rejoice in the Madrid bombings.'
Compounding
this is the phenomenon of conversion to Islam. Although
evidence is not systematic and appears to be anecdotal
some observers claim that since 9/11 there has been
an increase in the rate of converts to Islam in
response to US foreign policy. A report by the French
agency responsible for internal intelligence calculated
that the country had anywhere in the region of 30,000
to 50,000 converts, although less than a hundred
were regarded as being involved in 'terrorism.'
Sfeir claimed that a small number of converts, many
of them disaffected youth, saw groups like Al Qaeda
as 'a kind of combat against the rich, powerful,
by the poor men of the planet.' He suggested that
fundamentalist foreign imams, trained in values
that sharply clash with French secularism, found
a very fertile recruiting ground in the poorer immigrant
districts. 'The kids there already watch Arab stations
on satellite TV, with their bloodthirsty slogans
and anti-western propaganda … they've already
been totally radicalised.'
After
conducting a survey of several thousand young French
Muslims he expressed surprise to learn that although
they claimed to practice a strict form of Islam,
few were able to identify the central tents of the
religion. He also found that 're-Islamisation' of
second-generation Muslims in both France and Europe
is fuelled by competition between the sexes. Young
Muslim women tend to leave their male counterparts
behind in their ability to adapt to the 'host country.'
This produces a negative reaction from males who
try to regain the advantage by insisting on the
reassertion of Islamic values. It is easy therefore
to reach the conclusion that the turn to Islam,
for young men, is about material power and advantage
rather than spirituality.
It
was against such a background that the French Government
in recent years has been pressing for a training
programme for indigenous Muslim clerics that would
lead to a greater respect for human rights. However
in Burgundy for the previous 14 years the European
Institute for Human Sciences (IESH) had been training
imams ostensibly for the purposes outlined by the
French Government. Its director Zuhair Mahmoud claimed
that Muslims living in France are quite prepared
to accept its laws.
In
the 1980s it became clear that the Muslims of France
and Europe were integrating definitively in their
adopted countries. Here a generation has grown up
with French as its mother tongue … These people
need imams to pass on the religious values of their
parents. Leaders from elsewhere cannot do it because
they do not understand the language or the customs
and habits that prevail here. They have to come
from inside.
Women
are also trained there and have certainly offered
evidence that it could be beneficial from the point
of view of women's rights. One trainee, referred
to as Aziza from the east of France said:
what
we have learned is to distinguish between law and
custom. It has been easy for men in our society
to tell us what to do by saying it comes from religion.
But things like forced marriage are not in Islamic
law. They are only customs and can be discarded.
The
IEHS won the backing of the French Government which
wanted to encourage 'a home-grown Islamic identity
and wean the five-million-strong community away
from its financial and doctrinal dependence on foreign
states.'
But
not all Muslims were happy with the growth of the
IEHS nor its links to the Union of Islamic Organisations
in France (UOIF) which secularists and progressives
argue is linked to the conservative Muslim Brotherhood.
They fear that the French Government had followed
the line of least resistance and was aiming to work
with conservatives rather than liberals.
According
to Antoine Sfeir, 'for a long time the UOIF has
been trying to infiltrate the cogs of state and
assume control of the Muslim community by marginalising
secular Muslims.' Sfeir would seem to hold to the
position of a leading authority on Islam, Jacques
Jormier, who argues that 'one does not modernize
Islam but Islamize modernity.' Consequently he argues
that the UOIF and its affiliates 'are a real threat
to secularism.'
Sfeir
has a nuanced view of US involvement in the Middle
East. He has sought to show that the US may be using
its presence in Iraq and other countries in the
region to undermine the nation states established
by the British and the French. In a lecture last
year he argued that despite a two year occupation
of Iraq no weapons of mass destruction were found
and there was no evidence of cooperation between
the Saddam regime and Al Qaeda. He outlined what
he thought was the real reason behind US involvement
in the Iraq. US management of Iraq was much tighter
than would seem at first glance. Asserting that
it was not another Vietnam he went on to pose the
question, 'what if the United States were maintaining
chaos in Iraq in order to stay in the country?'
He bolstered his view by pointing out that if law
and order were to be secured the US would have to
withdraw its forces. From a US perspective he contended
that the war made sense in that it increases US
influence in the region.
Developing
this reasoning he, along with Mezri Haddad, has
argued that US pursuit of the 'Greater Middle East
Project' can be easily understood given the prevalence
within the region of 'religious fundamentalism and
political nepotism.' However both Sfeir and Haddad
argued that 'the democratic domino effect sought
by US neoconservatives could turn into a nightmarish
snowball pattern serving the objectives of Islamist
totalitarianism.' They argue for the US to consider
the Tunisian approach:
The
American project aimed at democratizing the Arab-Muslim
world, getting rid of the fundamentalist virus,
anchoring a culture of tolerance, and achieving
women's liberation do in fact vindicate Tunisia's
strategic choices … the various reforms advocated
by the United States for the purpose of eliminating
the inherent causes of religious fundamentalism,
have already been achieved in Tunisia.
They
maintain that democracy can only be anchored if
it is accepted that 'democracy is a comprehensive
and gradual process; it is not an ex-nihilo kind
of creation.' They also argue that 'there is no
democracy without a minimum of social well-being
and economic prosperity' and that 'there is no democratic
culture without the separation of the religious
from the political, without the existence of a civil
society, without the secularization of education,
and without the liberation of women.'
Sfeir
has also raised questions about the role of the
US in its dealings with Osama bin Laden. Two months
before the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington
bin Laden apparently met a CIA agent in Dubai. Sfeir
commenting that he was not surprised said:
That
is nothing extraordinary. Bin Laden maintained contacts
with the CIA up to 1998. These contacts have not
ceased since bin Laden settled in Afghanistan. Up
to the last moment, CIA agents hoped that bin Laden
would return into the bosom of the US, as was the
case before 1989.
Last
October as part of a 120 strong delegation of French
intellectuals to Iran, Sfeir called for a better
understanding between the two societies:
We
have come to here to see, hear and understand Iran
and its people … the information of French
about Iran belongs to 50 years ago … we have
to transfer what we see and feel here to French
people and intellectuals … in a world sinking
in struggles, these efforts can help us correct
the current misunderstandings.
One
challenge facing Sfeir is to overcome the very deliberate
attempt to maintain as much misunderstanding as
possible waged by those who want to stamp their
own narrow sectarian view of the problems besetting
the world in the minds of many without the issues
having been fully aired in advance. By speaking
out in defence of human rights and against theocratic
fascism Antoine Sfeir is ensuring that the public
will be informed by as wide a debate as possible
rather than be a mere sponge for the purveyors of
nonsense.
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