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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><STRONG>Los Angeles Times<BR>January 2,
2002 <BR><BR>COLUMN ONE<BR>Battling Islamic
'Puritans'</STRONG><BR><BR>[UCLA professor, once a fanatic himself, is now a
leading scholarly voice<BR>against intolerance among Muslims. Death threats
don't deter him]<BR><BR>By TERESA WATANABE, TIMES RELIGION WRITER<BR><BR>The
most incendiary Muslim in American academia knows a thing or two
about<BR>Islamic fanatics. He says he used to be one as a seventh-grader in his
native<BR>Kuwait.<BR><BR>UCLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl remembers
beating up other kids,<BR>condemning his parents as unbelievers and destroying
his sister's Rod Stewart<BR>tape, "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" <BR><BR> "I found
it remarkably empowering to spew my hatred with the banner of God<BR>in my
hand," he says. But challenged by his father to take up true
religious<BR>scholarship, Abou El Fadl began a journey of Islamic learning that
would<BR>transform him into a nemesis of the extremists he once endorsed. Today,
at<BR>38, he is a leading warrior in the intellectual struggle that exploded
into<BR>America's consciousness Sept. 11: Who speaks for Islam? Who defines
it?<BR><BR>With breathtaking bluntness, Abou El Fadl attacks Muslims who promote
a<BR>strict, literalist trend in Islam, most prominently the creed of Wahhabism
in<BR>Saudi Arabia.<BR><BR>In his writings and through the electronic media, he
accuses them of an<BR>"intolerant puritanism" that values ritual over morality.
He blames them<BR>for oppressing millions of women, creating hostility toward
non-Muslims and<BR>giving the likes of Osama bin Laden their theological
justification for<BR>terrorism. He issues scathing critiques of Saudi legal
rulings that permit<BR>everything from the mistreatment of dogs to the beating
of women.<BR><BR>For tackling the puritans in high-profile forums, Abou El Fadl
has received<BR>so many death threats that new security systems are going up
around his<BR>office and home. His books are banned in Saudi Arabia and his
visa<BR>applications denied in Egypt.<BR><BR>Before Sept. 11, his daily battles
would have been dismissed by outsiders as<BR>esoteric doctrinal debates. Today
they are better understood as critical<BR>insights into the fierce ideological
tensions raging within Islam between the<BR>forces of puritanism and moderation.
They shed light on how Islam can produce<BR>such chilling extremists as Bin
Laden, who exults in the carnage of Sept. 11<BR>as "blessed strikes."<BR><BR>By
devoting himself to a modern interpretation of the Koran, Abou El Fadl
is<BR>perhaps the most articulate enemy of the Wahhabi creed that shaped
Bin<BR>Laden's brand of Islam.<BR><BR>"The supremacist creed of the puritan
groups is distinctive and uniquely<BR>dangerous," the scholar recently wrote in
the influential Boston Review.<BR>"They do not merely seek self-empowerment, but
aggressively seek to<BR>disempower, dominate or destroy others."<BR><BR>To many
muftis, ayatollahs, sheiks and their followers throughout the world,<BR>Abou El
Fadl has become "America's most dangerous corrupter of Islam," as one<BR>foe put
it.<BR><BR>One international network of students claims credit for successfully
working<BR>to blacklist him from most Islamic conferences and publications under
the<BR>banner of protecting "the one and only true Islam."<BR><BR>Wahhabism's
founder, 18th century evangelist Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, was<BR>alarmed by
what he viewed as corruptions to the faith. He advocated a
strict,<BR>back-to-basics approach to keep Islam as pure as the day it was
revealed to<BR>the Prophet Muhammad and practiced by his early companions nearly
1,400 years<BR>ago.<BR><BR>Wahhabism had long been a marginal force in Islam.
Abou El Fadl asserts that<BR>it has risen in prominence in the last three
decades because of the collapse<BR>of Islamic institutions after colonialism,
creating a vacuum of authority<BR>that puritans, backed by Saudi petrodollars,
rushed to fill.<BR><BR>Today's puritans advocate strict gender roles and
perpetual guarding against<BR>what they view as heretical innovations--be they
new interpretations of the<BR>faith by scholars such as Abou El Fadl or other
expressions of Islam, such as<BR>mystical Sufism or the Shiite branch of the
faith.<BR><BR>Many followers of Wahhab describe their approach benevolently,
merely as<BR>"monotheism without the frills," as one member of the
Saudi-financed<BR>King Fahd Mosque in Culver City put it.<BR><BR>Abou El Fadl,
however, says extremists have used Wahhabism to justify<BR>sometimes violent
intolerance--massacres of Sufis and Shiite, for<BR>instance--or hostility to
non-Muslim "infidels" that has bred terrorist acts.<BR><BR>Many Muslims see an
even more pervasive impact of puritanism--robbing Islam<BR>of its richness and
flexibility. Howard University professor Sulayman Nyang<BR>calls it "the
mummification, ossification and fossilization of Islam."<BR><BR>"Most of these
groups we call fundamentalists have a rigid idea that<BR>everything is sealed in
concrete and there is no elasticity in<BR>reinterpretation," says Nyang, an
African-born professor of African and<BR>Islamic studies. "We need to inject
life back into Islam and open it up in<BR>light of new realities."<BR><BR>In
that pursuit, Nyang says, Abou El Fadl "is blazing a new trail."<BR><BR>Other
Muslim intellectuals trying to reclaim their faith's rich legacy of<BR>tolerance
and compassion have also suffered for it.<BR><BR>Abdulaziz Sachedina at the
University of Virginia says his liberal views on<BR>women and pluralism provoked
a 1998 fatwa, or religious edict, from an Iraqi<BR>ayatollah that resulted in
some Islamic centers in the United States banning<BR>his
appearances.<BR><BR>Ebrahim Moosa, an associate professor of Islamic studies at
Duke University,<BR>says his South African home was bombed by puritans in 1998
because of his<BR>activism promoting religious, racial and gender
equality.<BR><BR>But it is Abou El Fadl who appears to pose the greatest threat
to the<BR>puritanical view of Islam because he promotes his competing vision
with an<BR>erudition and persuasive prose that even his foes grudgingly
acknowledge.<BR><BR>Fajrul Din, a student in Saudi Arabia who belongs to the
international<BR>student group that opposes Abou El Fadl, ticks off the
scholar's sins:<BR>defending infidels against Muslims in court; befriending
Shiite, Jews and<BR>Bahais; embracing music; owning devilish black dogs; and
sheltering wives<BR>fleeing from the "discipline" of husbands.<BR><BR>What makes
Abou El Fadl such a master of pandering to Western liberal<BR>sensitivities, Din
wrote in an e-mail, is that "with each of these heretical<BR>views, he weaves
sweet words like a serpent, and misleads the naive and<BR>simple. His sin is
greater than any other. He studied and saw the light, but<BR>chose to turn away
from it. We will not dirty our hands by touching him, but<BR>let him perish like
a dog among the heathens he loves so much."<BR><BR>Dogs and Books as Symbols of
His Effort<BR><BR>The man at the center of this ideological furor is physically
unimposing,<BR>with a short, stocky frame, light brown eyes and olive skin. His
home is<BR>dominated by two elements that symbolize much about Islam's
ideological<BR>tensions today: dogs and books.<BR><BR>Abou El Fadl loves to use
dogs to illustrate what he regards as the puritans'<BR>willful ignorance of
Islamic tradition and an oppressive emphasis on law over<BR>morality.<BR><BR>In
much of the Muslim world, dogs are decidedly not man's best friend. Abou<BR>El
Fadl says he was taught that they were impure and that black dogs
in<BR>particular were evil.<BR><BR>Religious traditions hold that if a dog--or
woman--passes in front of you as<BR>you prepare to pray, it pollutes your purity
and negates your prayer. Dogs<BR>are permissible as watchdogs or for other
utilitarian purposes, but not<BR>simply for companionship. Abou El Fadl says
this zealous adherence to<BR>doctrine led one religious authority to advise a
Muslim that his pet dog was<BR>evil and should be driven away by cutting off its
food and water.<BR><BR>Many Muslims say this caution toward dogs is
fundamentally a matter of<BR>hygiene. Many devout Muslims follow such rules
without question, for<BR>submission to God is Islam's highest call whether the
reasons for divine law<BR>are apparent or not, according to Sheik Tajuddin B.
Shuaib of the King Fahd<BR>Mosque.<BR><BR>But Abou El Fadl prides himself on
questioning just about everything. He<BR>could not fathom a God who would
condemn such loving, loyal creatures. So<BR>about five years ago he set out to
investigate.<BR><BR>After a lengthy process of textual research and prayer for
divine guidance,<BR>he concluded that reports against dogs were passed on
through questionable<BR>chains of transmissions, or contradicted by more
favorable reports--for<BR>instance, one story of Muhammad praying with his dogs
playing nearby.<BR><BR>Some reports against dogs bear uncanny similarities to
Arab folklore, Abou El<BR>Fadl says, leading him to suspect that someone took
the tales and attributed<BR>them to the prophet.<BR><BR>As Abou El Fadl speaks,
Honey snoozes near his side. The yellow cocker<BR>spaniel mix was abandoned by
its owners and was cowering in the corner of an<BR>animal shelter, dirty and
racked by seizures, when the scholar and his wife<BR>rescued him.<BR><BR>They
also rescued Baby, a black shepherd a day away from being killed, and<BR>Calbee,
an abused dog who smelled of garbage for a year and still feels<BR>secure only
when curled up inside a plastic laundry basket.<BR><BR>"Dogs represent my
rebellion against ignorance about the basis of actual<BR>historical law," Abou
El Fadl says. "They are a symbol of the irrationality<BR>of our tradition, the
privileging of law over humaneness."<BR><BR>How, he asks, pointing to Honey, who
constantly follows him and nestles at<BR>his side, does God "create animals with
these natural tendencies and then<BR>condemn them as thoroughly
reprehensible?"<BR><BR>A Male Feminist Who Cites Tradition<BR><BR>In the same
audacious manner, he is a leading Muslim feminist, challenging<BR>puritanical
positions that women must be fully veiled and obey their husbands<BR>without
question or submit to beatings for disobedience. He even urges his<BR>wife,
Grace, to lead him in prayer, challenging prevailing Muslim practice
of<BR>all-male religious leadership.<BR><BR>Most troubling to his ideological
enemies, Abou El Fadl cannot be written off<BR>as a Westernized "Uncle Tom," a
term puritans use to dismiss American Muslims<BR>with similar open views. His
work is painstakingly grounded in classical<BR>Islamic sources, they
acknowledge, giving him the ability to defend his<BR>modern interpretations with
a dizzying command of ancient traditions.<BR><BR>For example, in a book
published this year challenging Saudi legal rulings on<BR>women--barring them
from freely wearing bras or high heels, for<BR>instance--Abou El Fadl read 350
sources, some of them ancient Islamic texts<BR>that are virtually impenetrable
to the untrained Muslim.<BR><BR>His book, "Speaking in God's Name," has outraged
puritans, prompting Din's<BR>international student group to declare that it will
organize demonstrations<BR>against the work in London and elsewhere.<BR><BR>But
to fans such as Asma Gull Hasan, author of "American Muslims: The
New<BR>Generation," Abou El Fadl gives feminists like her the courage
and<BR>intellectual firepower to resist what she calls the growing influence
of<BR>puritans in mosques and on college campuses.<BR><BR>"They are making Islam
a religion of shame, guilt and oppression," says<BR>Hasan, 25, bemoaning puritan
exhortations to avoid non-Muslims, MTV and, for<BR>women, uncovered heads.
"Without someone of Khaled's caliber to speak out<BR>against them, many more
Muslims would feel we have to accept their positions,<BR>and we might turn away
from the religion."<BR><BR>Abou El Fadl has also worked with international human
rights groups, blowing<BR>the whistle on such practices as the widespread rape
of Southeast Asian maids<BR>in Muslim countries throughout the Persian
Gulf.<BR><BR>He has helped document abuses in Sudan, Iraq, Kuwait, Syria,
Israel, Algeria,<BR>Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. As a result, he says, he can
no longer travel<BR>to Egypt, even as his relatives are aging and asking to see
him to say a last<BR>goodbye.<BR><BR>As a lawyer in the United States, he has
taken on highly sensitive cases,<BR>such as a suit against an American Muslim
leader's son for leaving a woman<BR>pregnant and in debt in apparent violation
of an oral marriage contract. And<BR>he frequently serves as an expert witness
to help victims of religious<BR>persecution obtain political asylum
here.<BR><BR>On a recent afternoon, he took the witness stand in the Los Angeles
courtroom<BR>of federal immigration-law Judge Richard D. Walton. Wagih Wadie, an
Egyptian<BR>bank teller and member of the Coptic Christian church, was seeking
political<BR>asylum, telling the judge he was tortured by Egyptian security
police on<BR>trumped-up charges of defaming Islam and causing fitna, or national
disunity,<BR>last year. His only crime, Wadie asserted, was offending an
influential<BR>Muslim by refusing to cash his check.<BR><BR>When Abou El Fadl
took the stand, he testified about the Egyptian<BR>government's record of
torture and the plausibility of the petitioner's fears<BR>of persecution. Walton
granted asylum.<BR><BR>"I don't know any other Muslim who sticks his neck out
like he does," says<BR>Wadie's attorney, Roni Deutsch. He says Abou El Fadl's
testimony is so<BR>authoritative that it nearly always clinches court victories,
yet comes<BR>either free or at just a fraction of the $500 hourly going
rate.<BR><BR>"I don't know anybody who does what he does in any religion. He
doesn't have<BR>an agenda. He does this because he believes it is
right."<BR><BR>Abou El Fadl says he does this, in part, because he has been on
the other<BR>side. He says he was persecuted by security forces in the Mideast
in the<BR>1980s after writing pro-democracy articles and poems. (He asks that
the name<BR>of the country not be printed for fear of retribution against
relatives.)<BR>Advised to flee, he stood in line at the U.S. Embassy praying for
a student<BR>visa.<BR><BR>"I made a promise to God that if you allow me to be
where I can speak without<BR>fear, I will never shut up," he says. "Now it's
been 20 years, and I've kept<BR>my bargain."<BR><BR>A Cocky Boy Learns to
Overcome Arrogance<BR><BR>Abou El Fadl is physically frail, popping 36 pills a
day for maladies ranging<BR>from osteoporosis to asthma. He speaks in a soft
voice and sometimes avoids<BR>direct eye contact. He can boyishly haul his
family to video arcades to shoot<BR>down zombies in "House of the Dead." He is
the quintessential absent-minded<BR>professor who doesn't drive, can't remember
his address, took two years to<BR>learn his phone number and once wore his son's
pint-sized tie to class,<BR>vaguely wondering why students kept
grinning.<BR><BR>All this belies an extravagant overachiever.<BR><BR>He
memorized the Koran at age 12, but says his real learning began after
his<BR>rebellion against his parents as a seventh-grader.<BR><BR>His father, a
lawyer from a family with a long tradition of Islamic learning,<BR>challenged
his cocky son to test his expertise in a religion class at a local<BR>mosque.
The class was on shariah, Islamic law, taught Socratic-style, and<BR>Abou El
Fadl says the other students--both girls and boys--demolished him.<BR>Crushed,
he ran home, dived under his bed and cried.<BR><BR>"Is the solution for you to
cry? Or learn?" his father admonished him. "If<BR>anyone can learn it is you.
Your only stupidity is your arrogance."<BR><BR>For the next decade, Abou El Fadl
spent four hours each day after school, all<BR>weekend and every summer in Egypt
learning the Islamic classics at the feet<BR>of such celebrated sheiks as
Muhammad Al-Ghazali, a world-renowned proponent<BR>of moderate Islamic
revivalism.<BR><BR>He spoke broken English when he arrived at Yale in 1982. Four
years later, he<BR>graduated magna cum laude and won the prestigious Scholar of
the House award<BR>for exceptionally gifted students.<BR><BR>Next was a law
degree in 1989 from the University of Pennsylvania and a<BR>first-place award in
the national Jessup Moot Court Competition. He clerked<BR>for the Arizona
Supreme Court and worked in commercial and immigration law.<BR>He became a
naturalized American citizen.<BR><BR>In 1998, he completed his doctorate in
Islamic law at Princeton, where he<BR>earned a perfect grade point average,
nabbed a prestigious writing award and<BR>won Best Dissertation for a paper on
"Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law."<BR><BR>Abou El Fadl was teaching at the
University of Texas in Austin when Irene<BR>Bierman of UCLA's Center for Near
Eastern Studies went to scout him out in<BR>1998 for a new chair in Islamic law.
Bierman says his chief attraction was<BR>his rare combination of a doctorate and
a law degree, Western and Islamic<BR>training, legal experience and prolific
academic scholarship.<BR><BR>To Muslim philanthropists Omar and Esmeralda Alfi,
who have pledged a<BR>$1-million endowment to finance the chair, Abou El Fadl
presented the perfect<BR>candidate.<BR><BR>"People say there is a conflict
between modernity and tradition, but Khaled<BR>is able to get the most liberal
thoughts from a very old tradition because of<BR>his deep knowledge and the
awesome amount of reading he does," Esmeralda Alfi<BR>says.<BR><BR>Library
Illustrates Vast Traditions<BR><BR>Abou El Fadl's most important weapon is
books. They line the walls of his<BR>home, fill an entire room on the second
floor and spill out into another<BR>detached room outside. His annual book
budget is more than $60,000. His<BR>entire collection surpasses 40,000 volumes
on law, theology, sociology,<BR>philosophy, history, literature.<BR><BR>His
mother, Afaf El Nimr, says her eldest son was drawn to the written word<BR>from
the time he was 3, every day spreading out the newspaper and studying it<BR>in
deep concentration.<BR><BR>By the time he was 9, he had begun reading his
father's tomes on Winston<BR>Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Indian
nationalist leader Jawaharlal Nehru.<BR>Young Khaled would sell off his
underwear to raise money for more books,<BR>according to his mother.<BR><BR>The
10,000 volumes in his Islamic law library illustrate the vastness of
the<BR>faith's traditions--and some of its problems. The collection, some of
its<BR>items eight centuries old, includes writings from every school of thought
in<BR>the majority Sunni and minority Shiite traditions, some extinct. They run
the<BR>gamut from works by Muslims whom Abou El Fadl reveres, such as the
11th<BR>century Baghdad jurist Ibn 'Aqil, to those by writers he abhors, such as
Omar<BR>Abdel Rahman, the blind sheik serving a life sentence in connection with
the<BR>1993 World Trade Center bombing.<BR><BR>"Imagine how many intellects are
deposited in here," he says, "how many<BR>glimpses of perception."<BR><BR>He
agonizes over a rising tide of censorship. He blames it directly on the<BR>1970s
rise in oil prices that gave Saudi Arabia the financial resources to<BR>control
the Islamic book market and propagate the nation's puritan creed.<BR><BR>During
a recent trip to an Arabic bookstore in Anaheim, he pointed out<BR>numerous
books banned in the Mideast, including such classics as "1001<BR>Nights" and
other books on theories of human rights, homosexuality and<BR>Islam, and a
treatise on Sufism.<BR><BR>Abou El Fadl's own books--he published four in just
the last year--are banned<BR>in Saudi Arabia, although Din of the opposition
student group says bootleg<BR>translations are making the rounds in Medina and
scandalizing devout Muslims<BR>there.<BR><BR>Recently, Abou El Fadl says,
puritan Muslims have even begun cleansing the<BR>sacred texts of passages they
deem offensive. He exposes the practice in an<BR>essay, "Corrupting God's Book,"
citing as one example a popular English<BR>translation of the Koran, widely
distributed in the United States, that he<BR>says skews the Arabic text to claim
women must cover their entire body except<BR>for one or both eyes.<BR><BR>"The
agony of the Muslim plight in the modern world cannot be expressed<BR>either in
words or tears," Abou El Fadl writes in the piece, published this<BR>year in a
collection of critical essays titled "Conference of the Books."<BR>"What can one
say about those people who, in their utter ignorance and<BR>maniacal arrogance,
subjugate even the word of God to ugliness and<BR>deformities?"<BR><BR>Some
Muslims are offended by such searing self-criticism, believing that it<BR>only
aids enemies of Islam. Others, such as University of Michigan Islamic<BR>studies
professor S. Abdal-Hakim Jackson, say Abou El Fadl's boldness is<BR>needed, but
they worry that it alienates the very audience the scholar is<BR>trying to
reform. Still others embrace the candor as a sign of the Muslim<BR>community's
maturity.<BR><BR>"You have to be confident in your place in society to begin
airing your dirty<BR>laundry," says Rick St. John, a Muslim convert and Los
Angeles attorney who<BR>believes that Abou El Fadl is "trying to improve the
religion and return it<BR>to something better and beautiful."<BR><BR>On his good
days, such comments encourage Abou El Fadl to believe that he is<BR>making a
difference. On his bad days, when he encounters death threats,<BR>back-stabbing,
censorship or indifference from his fellow Muslims, he is<BR>plaintive in his
pain.<BR><BR>"I am so lonely," he blurted out one night. "God gave me this
affliction of<BR>law. I learned all of it, and there is nothing I can do with
it, and if I<BR>don't preserve it, it will die."<BR><BR>He needs to pray. It is
1:25 a.m. In the darkened silence, for more than an<BR>hour, he offers
supplication to his creator, moving his lips in silent<BR>worship. Then he
rises. He kisses the Koran, touches it to his forehead and<BR>lets out a soft
whisper.<BR><BR>"And everything looks beautiful again."<BR><BR>(BEGIN TEXT OF
INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)<BR><BR>ISLAMIC TERMS<BR><BR>Sunni Muslim: A follower of
the main branch of Islam, which accepts the<BR>legitimacy of the four "rightly
guided" caliphs who were the companions and<BR>immediate successors of the
Prophet Muhammad: Abu Bakr, Umar ibn al-Khattab,<BR>Uthman ibn Affan and Ali ibn
Abi Talib.<BR><BR>Shiite Muslim: Historically, a follower of those who called
for the rulership<BR>of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the prophet's cousin, after the
prophet's death. Today,<BR>the Shiites constitutes the second-largest branch of
Islam after the Sunnis.<BR><BR>Sufi Muslim: Those who seek to achieve higher
degrees of spiritual excellence<BR>or pursue Islamic mysticism.<BR><BR>Wahhabi:
A follower of the strict teachings of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Adherents,<BR>who
object to the terms Wahhabism and Wahhabi, say they observe the "one
true<BR>Islam." They are hostile to the intercession of saints, visiting tombs
of<BR>saints, Sufism, Shiite Muslims and rational methods of deducing law.
The<BR>creed dominates in Saudi
Arabia.<BR><BR>*<BR><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>