Imam Tawhidi: Behind The Controversy
Mohammed Tawhidi, commonly known as Imam Tawhidi, has been garnering attention worldwide[1] with his controversial statements concerning the negative culture within Islam.
Some mainstream Australian media outlets allowed Tawhidi to express[2] his views without interruption or manipulative editing, though there has been a strong negative backlash by other members of the press.
The Sydney Morning Herald[3] dubs him as ‘anti-Muslim’ and an example of a ‘perverse phenomenon’, also implying he may be making up his claims of receiving death threats for his views. Some of the threats in question are detailed regularly by the Imam on social media, with one Muslim declaring he should have his ‘head cut off’[4] and that he’s a ‘dead man walking.’[5]
Further hostility towards the Imam was demonstrated in the footage of Tawhidi being verbally abused[6] in Lakemba whilst walking with Channel 7 news. Additionally, the director of Halal Certification in Australia recently went so far as to compare the Imam to the Lindt Cafe shooter[7]. According to the numerous threats and defamation of the Imam’s character, there appears to be a severe lack of support for this outspoken Muslim.
Though an interview with Jason, an Australian born Shiite Muslim, proves that at least a minority of Muslims are in support of his actions. Jason currently studies neuroscience at Sydney University and holds a masters in Islamic Studies, a qualified voice on the statements made by Tawhidi about Islam and the Australian Muslim community. “ABC news described Tawhidi as a ‘Shia extremist’ and accused him of ‘waging a sectarian war against Australia's majority Sunni community.’[8] According to a comment on Facebook[9], Tawhidi’s cousins were killed by Sunni radicals, so there are some grounds to suspect Tawhidi of being opposed to these Sunni mosques for personal reasons. Would you consider the Imam an ‘extremist’, or do you suspect him of being disingenuous or having ulterior motives?”
“Sheikh Tawhidi, in my opinion is not necessarily an ‘extremist’, but it is understandable how he can be perceived as one. Tawhidi expressed publicly his opinions on historical figures revered in certain schools of thought within Islam, thereby making him the source of a lot of hate from the majority of Muslims. Plus he is very vocally opposed to ideological elements within his own school of thought, being a student from the Shirazi school (a Shi’ite Muslim cleric) who is disliked by many Shi’ite Muslims for his opposition to the Iranian government. The Shi’ites are themselves divided according to their political allegiances. A lot of Shi’ite Lebanese adore Iran for its help against Israel, and for development projects for Lebanese civilians, and hence are ideologically glued to Iran with the help of Hezbollah, however many Iranians, if not the majority are opposed to the political ideology of the Islamic republic, one of them being the Ayatollah Sadiq Shirazi (the clerical leader of Sheikh Tawhidi). Hence Tawhidi is a figure who becomes perceived as an extremist by both many Sunnis and Shiites as he is vastly deviant from the mainstream opinions on both sides of the schism.”
“Media Watch, another ABC program, dubs the imams views as ‘divisive, offensive, abusive and just plain crazy’, adding that ‘the media should really not be giving him a megaphone’.[10] This is despite once suspected terrorist Zaky Mallah being on Q&A, who suggested on their program that the Liberal Party’s actions could justify Australian Muslims to join ISIS. [11] Which figure do you think the media should be giving more air time to, and who do you think better represents the views of the Australian Muslim public?”
“Neither of them. Tawhidi stands out much more than Zaky Mallah, he’s nothing like Zaky Mallah, it’s a totally different discourse all together. Tawhidi is not , I would say , a radical, although he does possess some radical shiite views, but that does not make him a radical. Zaky Mallah on the other hand is an absolute radical, his support of ISIS really clearly insinuates that.
Tawhidi, despite having certain Shiite extremist viewpoints, is not an extremist altogether. I
I say this because he does attack a lot of the Shiites as well. A lot of the Shiite community do not agree with him or like him because they feel he is too critical of their own viewpoints.
There’s a lot of polarity within the Shiite community even in Australia and, not to diverge, but I do believe a lot of the problems exist largely because there’s a lack of integration, not assimilation but integration into the Australian community…that’s largely due to two factors, first of all, us Australians are too soft on refugees and too soft on people that come to Australia and I think Tawhidi does express this concern and I agree with that aspect….A lot of them just come here for ulterior purposes and we don’t know what those purposes are and they somehow come to represent the views of the Muslim community. Those factors significantly affect how the Muslim community is perceived and how Muslim people perceive (Tawhidi) I as an Australian born Muslim being born in this country, would say that I’ve integrated with the values of Australia, my name is even Jason, I do not use an Islamic name.
There is a lack of an Australian Muslim identity. Muslims today are too caught up in what ethnic backgrounds they are, whether they are Iraqi, Pakistani, Saudi Arabian, there is no sense of an Australian Muslim identity and it’s caused a lot of Australian Muslims like myself to not feel connected with other Muslims because we don’t know where we belong. Tawhidi’s war is not a war against all Muslims, it’s a war against those Muslims that have such backward ideologies and backward thinking, and they unfortunately represent the mass because our government in past have been unable to protect our borders safely enough from this flow of people whose thoughts and ideologies are unknown.
This being said, I am extremely against Tawhidi’s approach, the way in which he insults other figures. This is not the manner of diplomacy in which he should be working around it, he should be using facts and statistics, discussing the amount of migration patterns to Australia who are Muslim descent.
So no he’s not an ‘extremist’ because he’s challenging those factors indirectly, but his approach makes him seem extreme.”
“What you’ve mentioned there is his provocative approach. You’ve probably seen the rise of right wing provocateur figures like Milo Yiannopolous. It’s definitely fair to say he’s riding that wave.
“Yes, and I don’t blame him either”
“So you seem to think he’s an overall force for good, therefore using that method to gain popularity can be justified?”
“I totally agree with you.”
“Tawhidi has expressed annoyance at the Muslim community for what he considers misguided anger.
Quote from Twitter: ’Muslims are more upset with Donald Trump over the Muslim ban than with ISIS for beheading innocents in the name of their own religion.’[12]
In your experience with the Muslim community and in your studies of Islam do you agree that there is not enough public or private condemnation of terrorism?”
“Absolutely. There is a lack of public condemnation and the reason why is exactly as Sheikh Tawhidi has conceded: a lot of people do support the activities of ISIS but they do it secretly. I can tell you from being a student of Sydney University for 8-9 years now, I do not feel comfortable going to the prayer room and the reason why is because I hear, as soon as I pray as a Shiite Muslim, I hear people talking about how ISIS is doing a good job about the shiites. And do you know who funds the Sydney University Muslim students association? Hizb ut-Tahrir.*”
*(Hizb ut-Tahrir is a radical Islamic group with the goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate.
They have more than 300 members in Australia. A video of two of their female members explaining how men should appropriately beat their wives went viral earlier this year)[13]
“There’s a huge issue within the Muslim community - you find there are so called scholars or Imams and Sheiks that make the argument that only sheikhs are correct when talking about Islam and everyone else in the general public has no right to speak about the religion. So, there are conditions that you can only speak about Islam and condemning certain activities unless you are a scholar. There’s a huge issue privately and publicly and I think a lot of the youth have been brainwashed, they’re being conditioned - I mean society conditions people in general-but in this situation we have young kids that are being brought up to the mosque, which acts as a community centre for these people. They’re being conditioned into very extreme thoughts and ideas - even the Shiites may seem to be less extreme than the Sunnis, the Shiites not having any sort of extreme movement, however there do seem to be extreme Shiite elements within our community that are reacting to the negativity that Sunnis have brought upon the Shiites. There isn’t much discussion about this subject because the two parties fail to discuss and talk their issues out together, so they end up staying at their respective mosques being conditioned to hate one another.”
“Tawhidi directly names the Quran as the cause of radicalisation:
’for the past 1400 years we have had a religion of war…the islamic scriptures is exactly what is pushing these people to behead the infidel’[14]
With your knowledge of the Quran, do you consider the notion that Islam has always been a religion of war, and that the Quran will inevitably cause radicalisation?”
“I sympathise with this approach, as Muslim emperors throughout history have always been advocating war against others under the pretext of religion while it is well known that their intentions were for booty and spoils of war. The Qur’an is, however, not the source for this, but rather the Hadith literature, considered the second most important literature to the Sunni Muslim world. There exists many unfiltered and unmoderated texts in the Hadith tradition which advocates violence, disrespect towards Non-Muslims, etc. Hadith refers to stories of events which are narrated by people who claimed to have heard traditions stemming back to the Prophet Muhammad. The chain of narrators can be vast, sometimes even from 10-15 people from the author of the text all the way back to the prophet or a companion of the prophet. Our definitions of ‘companions’ of the prophet are even corrupted and vary from school of thought. Furthermore, we find evidences that many of the hadith literature were written with political agendas. The Qur’an is a text which can be interpreted in as many ways as possible, just as any other book. The radicalisation aspect depends on the mental state of the individual reading a text, as he tries to justify his ideology based on a text. Hence the Qur’an is not necessarily a source of radicalisation in as much the same way as any other book can inspire radicalisation if read by those with motives. However, the hadith literature can be a source of radicalisation which requires further investigation.”
He has publicly stated that ‘85% of Islam is in need of revision, reformation and filtering’[15] and that ‘Islam has to reform or otherwise it won’t survive.’[16]
He has also called for the banning of certain Islamic texts.
Do you think Islam is in need of reformation, or at the very least some texts should be banned?
“It depends on what we mean by reformation. If we mean by reformation an evaluation of the mindset of the people, then I would say, yes. Muslims are in need of change and reformation. It is the collective unconscious of the Muslim history and hence of the Muslim mind that requires revision. Texts should not be made to be banned, but rather Muslims should be made to believe that they are obsessed with the culture of the history of religion, not with the core or essence of Islam. In my opinion, those who are in love with the core or essence of Islamic principles are the ones oppressed by their own peers.”
“In regards to your views expressed today, do you think a good portion of Australian Muslims would agree with you?”
“In the current state of the Muslim mind, no. But I would hope this can change as a generation of Australian born Muslims are cultivated and are not ideologically influenced by the dogmatism of families who come into the country with their pre-existing thoughts and mental states.”
Jason elaborated on this concept of ‘The Muslim mind’ at a bi-monthly research group meeting for his organisation ‘HIKMA’[17], the topic of this meeting being ‘Reconstruction of Islamic Thought’.
Jason explained how in the context of Neuroscience the Muslim brain is an ‘autistic’ or ‘rigid’ one, one that fails to adapt to new environments and is stuck in old tradition.
This was met with accusations of racism from one audience member.
Jason also butted heads with a fellow academic who was publishing a study on Islamophobia, to which he responded that Muslims are responsible for Islamophobia and the negative feelings towards them. It was a refreshing to see these claims of widespread Islamophobia by one panel member being critically analysed by others at the meeting. There was a concerted effort to break down what was meant by the term, questioning whether a soon to be published study detailing Islamophobic incidents is accurate. Although it’s a relief to hear a Muslim academic recognise and so clearly condemn the issues within the Muslim community, it’s also worrying to hear Jason confirm Tawhidi’s claim that there is a radical Islamic movement in Australia.
With a Liberal government in parliament, it’s at least comforting to know politicians like Peter Dutton are very aware of the threats that our refugee intake poses.
[1]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8deTppcltM
[2]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYuHJ1mrsL
[3]
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/our-public-discourse-is-weakened-by-onetrick-contrarians-20170524-gwbuji.html
[4]
https://www.facebook.com/imamtawhidi/photos/a.1526441740934842.1073741828.1525256214386728/1970644129847932/?type=3&theater
[5]
https://scontent.fmel1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/19055245_1970647659847579_3810006439641706057_o.jpg?oh=5480ceec25a3920745b70dbd4f9777ae&oe=59DEF6EChttps://scontent.fmel1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/19055245_1970647659847579_3810006439641706057_o.jpg?oh=5480ceec25a3920745b70dbd4f9777ae&oe=59DEF6EC
[6]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfNjl_-MCy4
[7] https://www.facebook.com/imamtawhidi/photos/a.1694460254132989.1073741831.1525256214386728/1974294036149608/?type=3
[8]
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2017/04/11/4651763.htm
[9]
http://puu.sh/wf7EU/dc7513f0e2.png
[10]
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4672973.htm
[11]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYPbdbUExwQ
[12]
https://twitter.com/Imamofpeace/status/871644039531028480
[13] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/hizb-uttahrir-australias-domestic-violence-video-denounced-by-muslim-leaders/news-story/fab16efa92613844a11a944c926eb28f
[14]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYuHJ1mrsLI
[15]
https://twitter.com/imamofpeace/status/874872478098743297
[16]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igwaOrv7WGs
[17]
https://www.facebook.com/HIKMAResearch/
