Editorial

As if to give the lie to my last editorial, in which I argued that the “war on
terror” was a smokescreen covering the imperial ambitions of the United
States’ neo-conservative political elite, on the day that the issue went to press,
Toronto’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) announced the arrest of
seventeen young Muslim men on terrorism-related charges. Five are under
18, several are over 30, and the rest are in their late teens and early 20s.

The shock permeated Toronto. Non-Muslims were shocked that “it
could happen here,” and Muslims were shocked that some of their own were
willing to kill fellow Canadians. As can be imagined, the following media
frenzy displayed the usual racism (disguised as attacks on multiculturalism)
from commentaries, editorials, letters to the editor, and experts concerning
the “threat” of Muslim extremism in Canada. Muslim organizations and
those with links to the media were back on the media circuit (or is it circus?)
doing interviews, hot on the heels of the cartoon controversy, trying to
explain this and to distance themselves and Islam as a religion from attack.
There was the usual spike in Islamophobic backlash, although this was
largely contained by Toronto’s Mayor David Miller and other leaders.

There was also the usual skepticism and claims of anti-Muslim discrim-
ination from some Muslims. While we do not know the veracity of the evi-
dence, and while it may be admirable that the belief is so strong that Islam
prohibits terror that we cannot conceive of fellow Muslims doing such a
thing, it ultimately harms the community that this kind of response is so
widespread. For one thing, the media use this sentiment to mock us and por-
tray us as cold and indifferent to the threat of terror. For another, although it
seems to be painful for some to admit, our community has to take ownership
of the extremism existing in its midst. 

These men may be innocent and may have been framed or discrimi-
nated against, but we have to face up to the results of such extremist inter-
pretations. It is all very well to say that “this is not Islam” and to worry about
the media’s portrayal of Islam as a religion of violence, but we must also talk
to ourselves and our youths and show them that such actions are beyond the
pale of Islam. Moreover, we need to debunk the arguments of those Muslims
who challenge this view.



By the same token, we must follow proper Islamic etiquette when
engaging in such critiques. The “progressive Muslim” approach of attacking
fellow Muslims and mainstream Muslim associations as “Wahhabist”
extremists and portraying themselves as the only peaceful, moderate Mus-
lims available to Canada was quite shameful. One radio documentary about
Islamic extremism in Toronto played a clip from a prominent Toronto “pro-
gressive” Muslim spokesman followed by one from Steven Emerson, a
known Islamophobe. One has to imagine that the Muslim community has
reached a new low when such people are quoted supporting each other.

Following the case is hard, due to the publication ban, but the lawyers
have revealed what they can. Incredibly, the young men were charged with
planning to storm the Parliament in Ottawa, hold MPs hostage and decapi-
tate Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and blow up the Canadian Security
Intelligence Service’s (CSIS) headquarters and the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation (CBC), among other targets. For the briefest moment, I consid-
ered the idea that these arrests had proven me and other skeptical scholars of
the “war on terror” wrong: I have been in the CBC building before, and
could have died had such an attack been successful. (Nothing like con-
fronting one’s own mortality to alter one’s thinking.) “Thank God that the
RCMP and CSIS investigations foiled this plot” was an early thought. But
upon deeper investigation, my original position remains the most robust the-
ory to understand this “war,” even if it turns out that we should be grateful
to the RCMP/CSIS for foiling indiscriminate bombings.

Before proceeding, I would like to state emphatically that Islam does
not support the killing of civilians and that those who argue otherwise are
perverting the Qur’anic text. While self-defense is enjoined, indiscriminate
aggression is not. Moreover, the Prophet’s prohibition on killing women
and children, as well as those devoted to the religious life and old people,
has been upheld by Islamic jurisprudence from the beginning.

However, let’s not forget the “Project Thread” fiasco of 2003, in which
twenty-one young South Asian men were arrested for “planning an attack”
on the Pickering nuclear power station. Supposedly an al-Qaeda sleeper cell,
the charges were dropped by the end of the month for lack of evidence. Even
though they were never formally charged (or convicted) of a crime, most of
them were deported to Pakistan. No apology or clearing of their names was
issued. Their lives were ruined, and the Pakistani authorities continue to
harass them (www.threadbare.tyo.ca).

And then there was the dramatic revelation about a month later by
Mubin Shaikh, a Muslim informant. During an interview with the CBC

ii The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:4



about how the CSIS and then the RCMP had recruited him, as well as his
role in the arrests, he stated: 

So I met with the CSIS guys and they were very interested in me now, so
basically they put to me the prospect of working with them,” he said …
[I was asked to find out about] certain people, certain groups, getting
close to leaders of certain groups, talking to them, seeing what kind of
views they had and reporting on those views, what I thought those views
to be, were they nefarious, weren’t they nefarious.” (Stewart Bell and
Katie Rook, National Post, Friday, 14 July 2006.)

His revelations are troubling, because they suggest that the CSIS and the
RCMP sought to influence these youths. Muslim community leaders
recalled seeing him talking to and befriending these youths outside their
mosques. Although they looked up to him as a role model, instead of guid-
ing them and helping them understand the Qur’an properly, he encouraged
their line of thinking … perhaps even directed it. This is entrapment, defined
as when undercover law officials lure or encourage people to commit an ille-
gal act that they may not otherwise have thought of doing.

In the East Vancouver newspaper The Republic, Michael Nenonen
notes: “Noam Chomsky said that during the Vietnam era’s anti-war protests,
the easiest way to spot an FBI mole was to look for the person advocating
the most violent strategies.” A similar phenomenon may be occurring with
western governments’ undercover officers actually creating the so-called
radical Islamist threat. In her report on the Muslim informant, Toronto Star
reporter Michelle Shephard pointed out: 

Australia’s first terrorism trial ended in an acquittal last year after jurors
heard that a police agent working for the country’s spy service, and pos-
ing as a journalist, had offered 21-year-old terrorism suspect Zek Mallah
$3,000 for a videotape of him uttering threats against government build-
ings. In acquitting him of the terrorism charges, the jury concluded that
Mallah was not a terrorist, but a troubled orphan full of bravado. The
involvement of an FBI informant in the case of seven Miami men charged
with terrorism offences two weeks ago has been criticized by some of the
defence lawyers who argue that the agent had concocted part of the case.
The men are accused of plotting to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and
federal buildings in five cities, and of having ties to Al Qaeda. Lawyer
Nathan Clark told the New York Times that his client was “induced by the
government,” calling the case one of “entrapment.” But the involvement
of an undercover officer and informant in a New York case led to a con-
viction this May and was trumpeted as a milestone in the city’s fight

Editorial iii



against terrorism. The trial of Shahawar Matin Siraj, convicted of plotting
to blow up a subway station, revealed that an Egyptian-born police offi-
cer and undercover agent were instrumental in the case. (“Mounties had
mole in alleged terror cell Exclusive: Law prohibits publication of promi-
nent member of Muslim community,” Toronto Star, 13 July 2006.)

In the article cited above, Nenonen reminds us that the RCMP has
played this kind of role before: 

During the 1970s, as part of the police action against the FLQ, the RCMP
monitored election candidates, stole a Parti Quebecois membership list,
opened mail without authorization, engaged in 400 break-ins, electroni-
cally spied on at least one member of Parliament, and even burned down
a barn in Quebec. 

These worrying signs recall the theory that the “war on terror” is a
smokescreen for the imperial ambitions of an elite (supported by their fol-
lowers in satellite countries): The general public remains distracted by sup-
posed terror threats at home, while abroad the empire is being expanded.
That fact that Ottawa has embarked on a massive military spending spree at
the same time cannot be a coincidence: $2 billion for helicopters, $3.4 bil-
lion for cargo air, $2.1 billion for naval supply ships. Including maintenance,
this adds up to $15 billion over 20 years. These announcements were made
in June 2006, just as Canadians were feeling grateful that the RCMP and the
CSIS had foiled a “terrorist plot” in Toronto.

The subsequent support in Washington, London, Ottawa, and Canberra
for Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, which deserves an editorial in its own right,
simply “confirms” this theory. This tragedy was portrayed as democracies
supporting the “only” democracy in the Middle East against the “terrorist”
Hezbollah. That Lebanon is also a democracy, as well as Israel’s actions that
invite the appellation of “terrorist” (e.g., the July 30 attack on Qana), seem
to be irrelevant. And thus we come back to a theory that exposes such mor-
alizing for what it really is: territorial, expansionist, and imperialist.

This issue’s first article, “Classification of Abrogation in the Qur’an: A
Critical Analysis,” tackles an important topic that implicitly addresses some
of the themes alluded to above. Abrogation is the concept that later revela-
tions cancel earlier ones, or that the Prophet’s later practices cancel his ear-
lier ones. The author uses the traditional methods (viz., examining the chain
of narration and the text for logical consistency) to investigate the relevant
hadiths. He argues that the reports of abrogation are not authentic, and that
abrogation endangers the Qur’an’s “safety and authenticity.”

iv The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:4



Politically, we can see the importance of this kind of investigation in that
some zealots, who like to resort to militancy to achieve their goals, often
claim that the Qur’anic verses enjoining tolerance were abrogated by those
enjoining fighting the enemy.

One of the more distressing aspects of the “war on terror” is its impact
on human relations at the micro-level – neighbor to neighbor, colleague to
colleague. A growing number of Americans favor racial profiling, and a July
2006 Gallup poll reported that nearly 22 percent would not like to have a
Muslim neighbor. Hence, it is timely for AJISS to publish two articles deal-
ing with Muslims and tolerance. Hilman Latief’s comparative study of Abu
Rayhan al-Biruni (d. 1048) and Abdul Karim al-Shahrastani (d. 1153) shows
that Muslim civilization is not innately hostile to non-Muslims and so can
cultivate sophisticated and respectful ways of relating to non-Muslims.
While the modern West prides itself on having invented tolerance, this was
a marked featured of medieval Islam. To be sure, many contemporary Mus-
lims, along with their hostile or unaware non-Muslim western counterparts,
need to be reminded of this. Many people might be surprised that al-Biruni
and al-Shahrastani produced very sophisticated and objective analyses of
Indian and Chinese religions, and that, as “Eric J. Sharpe writes, “the honor
of writing the first history of religion in world literature seems in fact to
belong to the Muslim Shahrastani.”

Maher Abu-Munshar’s “Islamicjerusalem: A Model for Multicultural-
ism” examines how these two rulers established a multicultural society in
Jerusalem. He introduces the novel concept of “Islamicjerusalem” as a way
to designate those periods of Muslim rule in which this city’s Jews, Chris-
tians, and Muslims lived together in harmony. This essay is a timely reminder
that when Muslims rule non-Muslims, they do not force them to convert or
kill them on every street corner, as is commonly claimed in some quarters
today. Indeed, Usama bin Laden would do well to reflect on the compassion-
ate treatment that `Umar ibn al-Khattab and Salah al-Din (Saladin) extended
to Jews and Christians, even as they signed treaties ending bloody wars.
Salah al-Din was renowned in Europe for his military prowess tempered by
his chivalry and merciful nature. In contrast, bin Laden is reviled and hated
for his barbarity.

In their “Islamic Concept of Education Reconsidered,” Khosrow Bagheri
and Zohre Khosravi provide a thoughtful exploration of the assumptions
about rationality that underpin liberal critiques of religious education. They
conclude that, contrary to the liberal presumption that religious education is
akin to indoctrination, “rationality is involved in all elements of the Islamic
concept of education.” They also argue that both modern Muslim madras-

Editorial v



sahs and modern western classrooms rely more on indoctrination than on
education through reason: “It must be noted that it is not too difficult to cre-
ate a ‘doctrine’ from science and then indoctrinate the people with it.”

We are pleased to include in this issue’s “Forum” section a submission
from Walter R. Schumm, a retired colonel and professor of family studies
who has a unique perspective on the underlying sociological causes for the
Bush administration’s abuse of military prisoners. He presents a very strong
argument that such abuse is morally wrong as well as pragmatically and
strategically counter-productive. Most importantly, Schumm recognizes the
disastrous impact that this abuse is having on the United States’ relations
with the Muslim world and offers the following very moving apology that
deserves widespread publicity: 

If it were possible for me to apologize to the entire Islamic world for our
errors and pray for their forgiveness, I surely would, though it would not
be deserved and perhaps not likely to be granted. I can certainly say that
abuse of EPWs is not consistent with the American military and moral
principles that I was taught to respect and obey.

His essay reminds us that even in a time of war, people of different faiths can
reach across the divide and grasp the hand of the “other” in order to bring
about peace, justice, and mutual respect. AJISS is proud to be his compan-
ion in this.

To end on a sad note. Dilnawaz Siddiqui, a long-time member of the
AJISS Editorial Board, passed away on 3 August 2006. Inna lillahi wa inna
ilayhi raji`´n. Always willing to make time to work for AJISS, he excelled in
doing article peer reviews, writing book reviews, and offering guidance for
the journal’s editorial. Most recently, he had agreed to take over some of my
responsibilities as editor during the birth of my last child, including writing
the editorial for the AJISS 22:4 issue. He will be sorely missed. May Allah
(swt) forgive his sins, give him ease in the grave, and grant him Paradise.

Katherine Bullock

vi The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:4