Irfan Al-Alawi, international director (London)1, Stephen Schwartz, executive director (Washington, DC), schwartz@islamicpluralism.eu1
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/336/7648/834
1 Centre for Islamic Pluralism
The disclosure that the leading alleged conspirators in lastyear’s bombing attempts in London and Glasgow were Muslimdoctors sent a shockwave through the worldwide non-Muslim public.The same question was asked everywhere: how can those who aretrained to heal turn to terrorism?
Our organisation, the Centre for Islamic Pluralism, has compileda report, Scientific Training and Radical Islam, which we werepreparing when the London and Glasgow events occurred. The reportis now complete and available as a free download at http://www.islamicpluralism.eu/PDFs/CIPRepWeb20308.pdf. It is a distillation of field research, interpretation of majorsource materials in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and English, and collationof individual perspectives from a team of Muslim researchers. All members of the team are experienced in the observation ofIslamist movements throughout the world. The report offers answersto the questions asked by personnel in the NHS, which employedthree of the suspects in the London and Glasgow incidents. Firstly,did the doctors who were alleged to have been involved in sucha conspiracy represent a freak phenomenon, marginal and uncharacteristicof Muslim medical staff? And secondly, were they radicalisedbefore or after coming to Britain?
Our replies to both questions, based on our observations, arediscomfiting. Many Muslim doctors, in Muslim and non-Muslimcountries, have embraced the extremist doctrines of the MuslimBrotherhood, the Saudi Wahhabis, and the Pakistani jihadists.Such trends are also filtered through such groups as al-Muhajiroun,now banned in the United Kingdom but which recruited medicalstudents, and Tabligh-i Jama’at, an Islamist movementthat is particularly prominent in the UK. Also, radicalisationof elite professionals is more a product of conflict withinIslam itself than of social conditions in Britain. But the problemis not one of religion: rather, it is ideological.
Two explanations for the radicalisation of the Muslim doctorshave gained currency. Firstly, that it is due to the same forcesthat are said to motivate other radical Islamists: deprivationand corruption in countries with a Muslim majority and the humiliationof the Palestinians and Iraqis at the hands of Israel and theEuropean and US powers. Secondly, that it has been due to theoverproduction and unemployment of doctors in countries likeEgypt and Pakistan. That view was elaborated mainly by observersof the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, after the group’ssuccess in penetrating and taking over professional associations,including those representing engineers, lawyers, and journalists,as well as doctors.
Our report suggests that neither of these explanations is adequate.The politics of victimised peoples and the economics of professionalunderemployment cannot account for radicalisation of professionalsin Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Saudi kingdom and Iran have remainedindependent of foreign rule, and neither has trouble employingits doctors; yet in both countries radical ideology is commonamong medical and other professionals.
Most of the world’s Muslims, including doctors, are neitherfundamentalists nor followers of radical sharia and do not becometainted with Islamist prejudices. But our report suggests thatmany Muslim doctors and other professionals are attracted toan ideology that projects a solution to all human problems ina fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, along with a demandfor exclusive governance that is based on the radical Wahhabiand related forms of religious law or sharia.
Medical and other professionals represent an elite in Muslimsocieties and have become an important component in the intra-Islamic”jihad” to impose an ultra-militant outlook on more than a billionSunni Muslims across the globe. Such professionals have a moraland social standing that can influence others to stray frommainstream Islam, which sees itself as one faith among many.
Furthermore, some Muslim doctors working in non-Muslim countriesmay bring from their native environments a propensity for radicalideology. In Muslim societies the physician is often seen assomething very like a religious scholar-just as clericsare often consulted for physical ailments. Medical education,even if conducted in Western institutions, may not break downbelief in this paradigm.
Indeed, the ordinary Muslim may consider the successful Muslimdoctor to be superior to the mainstream cleric, and the radicalIslamist doctor may easily usurp religious authority from atraditional imam. This disturbing phenomenon is visibly growing.A member of our centre, Khaleel Mohammed, has noted that inthe Muslim diaspora in the English speaking countries “Muslimleaders have not traditionally been chosen for their Islamicknowledge but for their stature in society-a medical doctor,a computer scientist.”
The role of Muslim doctors in taking extremist ideology to theIslamic masses has been well expressed by Mahmoud Abu Saud,an Islamist author active in several countries. He wrote, “Thedoctor has a big say and great weight in influencing his patientsand in righteously guiding their orientation. Besides, he shouldbe actively involved in propagating true Islam among Muslimsand non-Muslims… the best missionary service to be renderedby a medical doctor is to behave at the time in accordance withhis Islamic teachings.”
Abu Saud offered these comments in his contribution to one ofthe most revealing sources on this topic, a volume titled IslamicMedicine, edited by Shahid Athar and published in Pakistan in1989. Dr Athar is an endocrinologist. His work reflects an attitudealso seen in the Islamic Code of Medical Ethics, published bythe International Organization of Islamic Medicine in 1981,which states: “The Physician should be in possession of a thresholdknowledge of jurisprudence, worship and essentials of Fiqh [Islamicreligious law], enabling him to give counsel to patients seekinghis guidance about health and body conditions, with a bearingon the rites of worship.”
In an aspect of the problem that is little known or understoodby Westerners, the version of Islam presented by radicals as”modern” and in keeping with the social status of the medicalprofessional is one that is stripped of tradition and spirituality.
How, then, may medical professionals and the government in theUK, and the West in general, respond to this challenge? TheIslamic Medical Association estimates that about 10 000 Muslimdoctors and nurses practise in the UK. Vetting of Muslim doctorsfor radicalism may prove ineffective and will doubtless createa civil liberties problem. It is more important for the UK authoritiesto monitor closely the activities of radical Islamist groupsand to act decisively against those that legitimise or inciteviolence. Most important of all is to strengthen the authenticand proven anti-extremist trends in the Muslim communities themselves.To that end, we call for the organisation of new professionalassociations of traditional and moderate Muslim medical personnel,engineers, and lawyers, to repudiate extremist ideology.
The radical Islamist doctor may easily usurp religious authorityfrom a traditional imam
Competing interests: The Centre for Islamic Pluralism is a transnationalthink tank supporting Islamic intellectual and spiritual alternativesto extremism. It is a public charity financed by private donations.