It has long seemed to me that if Muslims are as motivated by religious devotion as we hear, and are as responsive to clear directives from their clerics as we hear, then responsible Sunni and Shia clerics might be expected to come down hard and publicly on terrorists. After all, suicide is supposed to be counter to the Quran, and killing innocent civilians--especially other Muslims--in wartime or any other time is strictly forbidden. But both these tactics are every day tools of the Al Qaida terrorists and even the Shia militia. Most clerics simply leave the topic alone, however.
Once upon a time, before the First World War, the Caliph in Constantinople--under protection of the Ottomans--maintained explicit policies of tolerance that preserved religious peace and even allowed large Christian and Jewish communities to flourish in the Middle East. Religious terrorism was suppressed as strongly as possible. It was one of the unintended consequences of the fall of the Ottomans that such central religious authority disappeared, and with it the policies it supported eroded.
An oped article in Saturday's Wall Street Journal by former Reagan national security adviser Robert McFarlane indicates that I am not alone in wondering about the strange absence of anti-terrorism fatwas until now. The good news McFarlane reports is that major progress in getting both Sunnis and Shia to issue such directives is underway.
It isn't easy, of course. Shia imams are afraid that if they outright ban violence by Shia, the Sunnis will take advantage of the situation, and vice versa. They also fear as individuals that if they oppose the terrorists, they themselves--and their mosques--will be targeted. However, they all may recognize the folly of the present situation now and perhaps the U.S. and Iraqi governments are figuring out adequate means to protect clerics who are willing to issue tough religious bans (fatwas).
Let's hope so. Let's hope, further, that the Saudis will bring the Wahabbis into the process. There is nothing that can accomplish the same with the Iranians at this point, but if Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf joins in the issuance of anti-terrorist fatwas, it will undercut the Iranians, for there is no Shia figure of comparable authority to Sistani in Iran.
Of course, the nasty truth about the "Muslim" violence in the Middle East (especially including Hezbollah and Hamas) is that they are politically-propelled in essence. They merely exploit religion. But at least if the religious leaders finally take concerted action against the terrorists, and condemn them, the promises about "72 virgins" and all that
will be harder to sell to the poor fools the terrorists recruit for suicide missions. Shame, not glory, should be the fate of families and friends of terrorist killers.
One final thought: The McFarlane story, if correct, has far more news significance than it has received so far--a below-the-fold oped in a Saturday edition of the Journal. Where are all the regular reporters on this important development?
