World of Islam is no monolith

From Mecca to Jakarta

BY ERIC TALMADGE ~ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Islam in the grinding poverty of Afghanistan is harsh, its justice unforgiving.

For a woman found guilty of adultery, the punishment is death -- which turbaned religious leaders carry out with stones. For ancient Buddhist statues deemed by the ruling Taliban to inspire idolatry, explosives did an equally thorough job.

In the holy lands of Saudi Arabia, Islam shows another face.

The Saudi constitution consists of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, and its accompanying traditions, and all legislation must conform to the Shariah, or Islamic law.

Still, a royal family, not clerics, rules the land. There are limousines in the streets; families watch satellite TV in their homes. In the capital, Riyadh, young men in jeans or white robes and women swaddled in black cloaks flock to a glitzy shopping mall to hang out.

As the terrorist attacks on the United States and the response since have shown, the Muslim world is no monolith. Afghanistan's extremism and alleged ties to the terror have made it a pariah among the leaders of fellow Muslim nations. Even the government of Pakistan, previously one of the Taliban's only friends, has offered support for Washington.

"There is a contemporary perception of Islam in the West that is misinformed, because many people still believe that Muslims across the world are angry, primitive and fanatical," said Salahuddin Ayub, a Malaysian ustaz, or religious instructor for Muslims.

"But they should understand that there should not be stereotypes, that there is great diversity among Muslim countries in different regions."

Islam was born in the Middle East. But it has grown beyond its origins, physically and spiritually.

In countries around the world, it has been adopted in strikingly different ways. From sub-Saharan Africa to the steppes of Central Asia and the Malay archipelago, the world's "other Muslims" have endowed it with a stunning diversity -- and a complexity born of conflict and compromise.

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Mecca and the Middle East will always be at the heart of Islam. But Asia may be where its future is shaped. Here, away from the Arab world, there are other difficulties, and other tensions.

More than half the world's Muslims live east of Karachi, Pakistan, and Asia is home to the four countries with the largest Islamic populations: Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India.

In the globe's most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia, muezzin call the faithful to evening prayers while throngs of the young head to discos for nights of drink and dance. This year, a woman was chosen president.

Here, too, the pressures on Muslims are intense.

Calls are strengthening in Asia for stricter observance of conservative Islamic ideals. Women in parts of Malaysia have been ordered to wear headscarves, and local Indonesian authorities closed nightspots last New Year's to avoid a backlash from Muslims in the holy month of Ramadan.

Ramadan will be observed beginning Nov. 17.

Since the attacks on New York and Washington, Islam in Asia has been reduced in the eyes of many Westerners to a terrorism emanating from the hills of Afghanistan.

But the story of Asia's Islam is above all one of a faith that swept a continent and adapted to the multitude of beliefs it encountered there.

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At the demographic center of the Islamic world -- Islamabad, Pakistan -- female models stream down a runway, the outlines of their bodies clear under sheer blouses.

Working the fashion show audience, Muslim waiters steal glances at the women and compete for the task of carrying refreshments backstage.

In Islamabad lives the divided soul of Asian Islam, split between a religion that imposes ironclad restrictions on the faithful and a more flexible creed that embraces tolerance and diversity.

The backdrop is the enduring struggle of Muslims worldwide to maintain a religious identity and culture while confronting the economic, social and political forces of Westernization.

This is true both in places left behind, like Afghanistan, and in more industrialized Asian nations like Indonesia and Malaysia.

Predictions about which way the region is headed are precarious. But no one can deny the growing strength of orthodox Islam, despite Asia's long history of diversity and tolerance.

"Between the more accommodating and modern Islam and the more fundamentalist Islam, I would say the recent gains have tended to be made by the fundamentalists," said Ng Kam Weng, a religion expert at Kairof, a think tank in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

"What you want to ask is whether these gains are permanent. I think the jury is still out."

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Afghanistan is just across the border from Pakistan. But it is a world away.

After years of struggle, first to repel Soviet troops and then of civil war, the Taliban religious militia emerged to impose an Islamic regime so severe that even other conservative Muslims call them extremists.

Guided not only by Islam, but also by Afghan tribal society and a history of poverty, the Taliban have banned videos, TV and music. Girls cannot go to school after age 8. Women may not work and must wear head-to-toe coverings called burquas. Men must have untrimmed beards. Violators have been whipped in the streets.

Through the 1980s and '90s, Islamic radicalism was most closely associated with the minority Shiite branch of Islam, through the Iranian revolution and the Hezbollah guerrilla war against Israeli troops occupying southern Lebanon. Because of the centuries-old Islamic split between Shiites and Sunnis, this radicalism resonated less with the Sunnis.

Attention is turning to what inspiration the Taliban -- and alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden -- may provide to Sunnis elsewhere.

"If you look at where radicalism and the dangers of radicalism are occurring, you have the Taliban and the export of a Taliban outlook and mentality," said John Esposito, a specialist in Asian Islam at Georgetown University. "When we talk about militancy in the first part of the 21st century ... (it's) going to come out of the Sunni experience."