My religion has strayed far since its golden age.

BY AMIR TAHERI
Saturday, October 27, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT

"This has nothing to do with Islam," British Prime
Minister Tony Blair recently told a delegation of
Muslims at a meeting at 10 Downing Street,
referring to the Sept. 11 attacks against the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Mr. Blair was echoing a view, popular both in
Europe and the U.S., that it is impolite, not to
say impolitic, to subject Islam to any criticism.
Yet to claim that the attacks had nothing to do
with Islam amounts to a whitewash. It is not only
disingenuous but also a disservice to Muslims, who
need to cast a critical glance at the way their
faith is taught, lived and practiced.

Even worse, the refusal to subject Islam to
rational analysis is a recipe for further
fanaticism. Unless we believe those who claim that
the Sept. 11 was organized by Israel, we have to
assume that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were
responsible. And since there is no mechanism for
excommunication in Islam, bin Laden and his gang
have every right to describe themselves as
Muslims.

Al Qaeda did not materialize out of thin air. Nor
have they been operating in a vacuum. Bin Laden
belongs to a prominent Yemeni-Saudi family that
makes much of its Islamic credentials. He began
his militant career in 1984 as a fund-raiser for
Afghans fighting the communist regime in Kabul in
the name of Islam. He had offices in a dozen
Muslim countries, none of which regarded his
activities as un-Islamic.
In 1993 bin Laden was divested of his Saudi
passport but was warmly welcomed in Sudan where a
fundamentalist regime is in power. Later, bin
Laden was the star of an international conference
of Muslim fundamentalists organized in Khartoum by
the then-strongman Hassan al-Turabi. He was
elected a member of the Supreme Council, whose
task is to promote a radical brand of Islam
throughout the world. That gave him the right to
call himself a "sheik" and issue religious fatwas,
or edicts. Again, since there is no clerical
hierarchy in Islam, there was no reason why bin
Laden could not claim such authority.

Once bin Laden was forced to leave Sudan (under
U.S. pressure), he was welcomed in his ancestral
homeland of Yemen, another Muslim country. From
there he went to Pakistan, the world´s second most
populous Muslim nation, where he was welcomed not
only by the army but also by virtually all of
Pakistan´s Islamic parties, which continue to
support him.

From Pakistan, bin Laden shifted to Afghanistan,
where the Taliban had established what they
claimed to be "the only truly Islamic government."
The Taliban continue to shelter bin Laden to this
day, even in the face of U.S. attacks. To say that
bin Laden has nothing to do with Islam and
Muslims, therefore, requires a big leap of
imagination.

When pressed hard, some Muslim leaders admit that
bin Laden is "part of Islam....."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=95001385