Razika Adnani is a philosopher and specialist in issues related to Islam. She is a member of the Orientation Council of the Fondation de l’Islam de France, of the Scientific Council of the CEFR and Founding President of the International Philosophy Days of Algiers.
INTERVIEW – For the philosopher and speaker, the knife attacks and violent aggressions that France has experienced in recent days are part of the Sharia, which intimates to “order the suitable and denounce the blameable”.
An “atmospheric jihadism”. The concept theorized by academic Gilles Kepel has never been as verified as in recent weeks.
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Do the recent knife attacks and aggressions for religious reasons observed in France aim to impose radical Islam in our society?
The acts of violence that France has experienced in recent days reveal a desire to subject the Muslims of France to the Sharia, in the name of the rule of Islamic law that is called “order the suitable and denounce the reprehensible”. This is a rule that applies more to Muslims even if religious have extended it to non-Muslims based on the concept of jihad.
The one who has the objective of imposing Sharia law has the objective of imposing Islam, and the one who wants to impose Islam imposes the Sharia. It is in the name of Islam that Sharia law is imposed, which is the legislative norm of Islam. In the Koran, there are verses that have a legal scope. It is the “koranic sharia” on which lawyers based themselves to set up, between about the 8th and 10th centuries, “the Sharia of books of law”.
For Muslims, Islam is not separable from Sharia, that is, its legal dimension. Thus, they decided, from the first centuries of Islam, after long discussions about the nature of Islam: is it a religion only or a religion and a social organization, as I explain in my book Islam: what problem? The challenges of reform. Imposing Sharia law has therefore always been the objective of practicing and traditional Muslims. Moreover, even today, the vast majority of Muslim countries apply, with different degrees, the Sharia.
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How to fight against the radical ideas shared by young Muslims, which take shape thanks to disinformation and social networks?
The struggle must be on several levels. First of all, that of the state, which must be firmer and more determined in its fight against Islamic radicalism to stop the Islamist ideology that is underway in France.
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Then, we must put an end to the idea that “Islamism is not Islam”, which Islamist specialists have liked to repeat since the 1970s. She made the nest of conservatism and radicalism by protecting Islam from criticism. This prevented Muslims from taking a critical look at their religion and religious discourse. On the contrary, this expression has reinforced them in their certainties and practices that date back to the first centuries of Islam and that are not in accordance with the values of our time and with the culture of France.
Finally, religious discourse must be honest with Muslims and non-Muslims, that is, we must put an end to the sentence: “It is not Islam but only Muslims”. Sentence that is itself at the origin of the academics’ sentence: “It is not Islam, but Islamism”.
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How did supporters of political Islam in France manage to impose the concept of “Islamophobia”?
Islamophobia is a concept that aims to prevent thought from expressing itself. It is therefore added to the list of concepts and theories that Muslim fundamentalists and literalists put in place, between the 8th and 10th centuries, to block thought and reason and prevent them from expressing themselves in the field of religion. Among these theories are that of the uncreated Koran, the theory of the salaf (or predecessor), the theory of naql (or literalism) and among the concepts, there is the one who affirms that “religion is a matter of heart and not of reason”. Islamophobia therefore easily finds its place in the consciousness of a large part of Muslims who think that Islam, God’s perfect religion transmitted by the predecessors who held the absolute truth, cannot be criticized.
The Muslim Brotherhood used it in the Muslim world as a weapon against progressives who had a different discourse about the Muslim religion, and in the West to arouse among Muslims the feeling of being a victim because a criticism of their religion is made. The idea that Islam does not admit any critical spirit is also nourished by academics, who have repeated for more than 50 years that Islam is not responsible for the problems that arise, but only Islamism that is not Islam.
We therefore reinforced this conviction that existed among a large part of Muslims from cultures where Islam is not criticized. For them, the one who criticizes him has no reason to do so other than out of fear or hatred of this religion. They perceive this as an injustice towards them. Prohibiting a critical spirit in the field of Islam is obviously not in the interest of Islam or Muslims.
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Pegida Canada 