Effectively, Mr. Harper hopes to win his fourth term on Oct. 19 in part by demonizing those few who wear the niqab — and much of Canada’s Muslim population by extension.
.. In this fear-mongering, many see the hand of Lynton Crosby, the Australian political operative who had been advising the Conservatives, according to a campaign spokesman. A veteran of winning campaigns for the former Australian prime minister John Howard and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, Mr. Crosby is known for his use of divisive social issues, if only to spur political apoplexy from political opponents and populist outrage from the masses.
The History of Centralized Islamic Religious Authority
Within classical Sunni Islam, there are four extant schools of law, three main approaches to theology, and a multitude of Sufi orders that emphasize Islam’s mystical aspects. Historically, the Azhari establishment, which follows classical Sunnism, has been highly pluralistic not only in recognizing the breadth of Sunnism as valid but also in what it would actually teach.
.. The classical Sunni ecumenical approach that the Azhar adopts has been at the heart of the Sunni cultural wars over the last 200 years. For example, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s purist Salafism (often known as Wahhabism), which began in the late 1700s, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s “modernist Salafism,” which has its roots in the early 1900s, were reactions to classical Sunnism, albeit in different ways.
.. Purist Salafis not only reject ecumenism but also stress a literal reading of the religious texts and largely refuse to accept the established body of qualified interpretation. They are suspicious of what they regard as freewheeling interpretations and excessive flexibilities within the Azhari and classical Sunni minhaj.
.. Most members of the upper echelons of the Azhar tend to view the Muslim Brotherhood with condescension and suspicion—of using religion for political purposes, much the way a bookish theologian might regard a Bible-thumping politician in the United States.
Islamic Scripture Is Not the Problem
As with the Protestant Reformation, there is a conservative reform movement in Islam today that competes with the liberal reformers. Foremost among the conservatives are the ultraconservative Salafists—Islam’s Puritans. They want to scrape off all the foreign accretions, such as Greek philosophy, that have attached themselves to Islam over the centuries and go back to a supposedly pure version of the faith. One big reason the conservative reformers have won the day so far is that some governments, especially the wealthy states of the Persian Gulf, have sponsored the ultraconservatives. Because rich Muslim governments have put their thumbs on the conservative side of the scale, Hirsi Ali wants the United States and other Western countries to do the same on the liberal side.
.. Still, imagine the U.S. government managed to navigate a thicket of laws and find its Muslim Martin Luther. His or her cause is going to suffer greatly in the arena of Muslim public opinion if it is revealed that the wildly unpopular United States is bankrolling it—a secret that will not last long in the era of WikiLeaks.
.. Westerners often fail to understand how all this blithe government meddling in other people’s religions comes off or why it’s so flawed, so it’s helpful to conduct the following thought experiment. Suppose Saudi Arabia felt threatened by evangelical Christianity because of its anti-Islamic tone, its influence over Republican politicians, and its pro-Israel slant. Rather than promote more positive images of Islam, ingratiate themselves with Republican politicians, and compete with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Saudis decide to fund evangelicals who are working to reform Christianity in ways that fit the Saudis’ agenda. Because that agenda goes against the grain of contemporary evangelical culture, the Saudis will probably not find a reformer who is popular among evangelicals. And because most Saudis don’t know a thing about American evangelical culture, they will have a tough time figuring out who can get the job done. Still, Saudi Arabia has plenty of money, so they assume it’s just a matter of spending enough on books, events, television shows, and so forth. Would they succeed?
..Al Qaeda hasn’t polled well ever since it started killing its coreligionists—in Jordan, after the head of al Qaeda’s branch in Iraq ordered the bombing of hotels in Amman, support for the group fell, from 56 percent in 2003 to 11 percent in 2011—and the Islamic State is even less popular.
Some Republican politicians see sympathy for Islam as a liability. Why?
Much of what passes for foreign-policy debate is actually the inversion of foreign policy, whereby conservatives try to replace a formidable target abroad with a softer one at home. Sadly, McCarthyism is not the only precedent in American history for this type of demonization: hyper-nationalist politicians went after German Americans during World War I and Japanese Americans during World War II. Similarly, today, with conservatives frustrated by America’s failed wars in the Middle East and the increasing unassailability of their traditional domestic foes, they are turning on American Muslims for the simplest of political reasons: because they can.