UCLA
Prof Khaled Abou El Fadl Condemns ISIS, But Does He Condemn Islamism?
by Cinnamon Stillwell and
Adelle Nazarian
Jihad Watch
May 12, 2015
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[JW title: "UCLA Prof Khaled Abou El Fadl Condemns ISIS, But Does
He Condemn Stealth Jihad?"]
Given the apologias
for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria's (ISIS) barbarism from the ranks of
Middle East studies, it was encouraging to find the University of
California, Los Angeles hosting the recent lecture,
"ISIS's Enslavement and Trafficking of Women." The speaker, Khaled
Abou El Fadl, Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law
at UCLA, has a history of equivocating on Sharia (Islamic law)
and other
aspects of
Islamism. Yet, in this instance, he provided insight into the
regional, cultural, and ideological influences underlying ISIS's crimes,
albeit in a rambling, disorganized manner.
A room reserved for 150 people at UCLA Law School swallowed the thirty
who attended, a mix of students, parents, and faculty members. Perhaps
embarrassed at the low turnout, Abou El Fadl stated at the outset:
"There are tons and tons of people who believe they know and speak
as if they know" about Islam, "but have very little interest in
actually learning anything." He further assured the audience that,
"numbers do not reflect quality, so I will believe as a matter of
conviction that you are worth a thousand because you are special
people."
These "special people" soon discovered just how elusive was
the subject of Abou El Fadl's lecture, for he spent the entire first half
discussing human trafficking, only occasionally referencing ISIS. After
explaining that, "It's not very effective to take an issue out of
the totality of its context," he promised to eventually "get to
the Muslim context of these things."
Shifting from human trafficking to the "legitimizing
culture" in Gulf countries and among "wealthy families and the
ruling elites around the region" of virtual
slavery (domestic workers), bride shopping,
and the sex trade, Abou El Fadl explained the connection:
ISIS doesn't invent the idea out of thin air. One of the videos in
which ISIS is auctioning off women after a battle . . . the ones who are
enthusiastically bidding on the product are clearly from the Gulf region.
While this claim would need confirmation, it's certainly
true for wealthy men visiting cities in Egypt
and refugee camps in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan to purchase girls. The
ideology underlying ISIS's mistreatment of women has much in common with
Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and other Islamist
actors throughout the region. Accordingly, Abou El Fadl noted:
If the jurists [Muslim scholars trained in Islamic law] tell ISIS
enslaving people is wrong, the response will be, "You're hypocrites,
you engage in it all the time." . . . ISIS is a very particular and
specific animal that is symptomatic of much larger ideological movements
that are problematic in their core.
On ISIS's enslavement of Yazidi
women, Abou El-Fadl described how, "ISIS trafficked in minorities
that were not people of the book [Christians, Jews, or Muslims], hence
they were declared booty of war." "For ISIS, Shia aren't
Muslim, either, so that's okay," he added, while its Sunni victims
fall under the rubric, "If they didn't pledge allegiance to us, they
are apostates and fair game."
At this promising juncture, Abou El Fadl began a tedious and
minutiae-ridden analysis of the ideological relationship between ISIS and
its forbearer, al-Qaeda, causing the audience to become impatient.
Conceding as much, he stated, "We can talk until tomorrow and I'm
sure you don't want to stay until tomorrow." Minutes later, after an
audience member departed, he acknowledged:
Once people start sneaking out, it's a sign that everyone is getting
bored. I could lose myself in this stuff forever. I promise you I'll try
to contain myself.
Then, after a beeping sound interrupted his resumed soliloquy, he said
to no one in particular, "This is my pill alarm," but "I'm
not going to take my medicine right now." He was met with
uncomfortable silence.
There were exceptions to Abou El Fadl's forthrightness. After invoking
two books that "have become critical for ISIS and al-Qaeda," Managing Barbarity by Abu Bakr Naji and Abu
Mus'ab al-Suri's The
Global Islamic Resistance Call, he remarked that the
latter reminded him of:
Islamophobic books that compile what they describe as every grievance
committed by Muslims against Christians or against Jews, whether
historical or not historical. Al-Suri does the exact same thing, but from
the Muslim side.
After the question and answer period concluded and, with it, the podcast
recording, Abou El Fadl spoke candidly for another forty-five minutes
with a small group of people. He raised the subject of human trafficking
in Israel, which, according to the U. S. State Department's 2014 annual report on the subject, the country has made a
concerted effort to combat. When pressed on Israel's superior
human rights record
in the region,
Abou El Fadl replied, "Well, not as far as the Palestinians are
concerned. You know, they're an occupying country."
Appearing flustered after further questioning, he betrayed his true
feelings:
I see this a lot among young, American, enthusiastic Zionist activists.
. . . It's time for American Jews to confront the fact that Israel has a
human rights problem. . . . They are among the systemic users of torture
and humiliation against people in the prisons.
Despite such prevarications, Abou El Fadl's lecture was, in the end,
illuminating. However, like the 126 Islamic scholars
who penned an open letter to
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi disputing the theological basis for the
group's heinous methods while sharing
Islamist goals such as implementing Sharia law in the West, he is not
disinterested. While ISIS terrorizes and conquers Middle Eastern
populations, the Khaled Abou El Fadls of academe work to undermine Western
culture from within, whether through soft-peddling Sharia, pushing
blasphemy laws, or branding critics of these aggressions
"Islamophobes." As such, a condemnation of ISIS does not
necessarily extend to the much broader problem of Islamism. As Zuhdi
Jasser, founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for
Democracy, put
it:
[T]hey haven't changed the drug, and the drug is Islamism, the Islamic
state [concept], caliphism, and jihadism. Until we as Muslims condemn
them as a whole, they are always going to end up feeding into radical
groups.
Adelle Nazarian is a journalist and contributor with Breitbart
News, who has reported extensively on politics, national security, Asia,
and the Middle East. She co-wrote this article with Cinnamon Stillwell,
the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project
of the Middle East Forum.
Stillwell can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.
This
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