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| Hamed Abdel-Samad |
Hamed Abdel-Samad has the honor – or the dubious
distinction, if you prefer – of being known as Germany’s chief Islam
critic. His views on Islam, that it is a
form of fascism, a loaded word in Germany, are highly controversial. He is sometimes put together with Thilo Sarrazin, the “Muslims are coming!” alarmist whose 2010 book, Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany is doing away with itself) quickly
became the best-selling book of the
decade in Germany almost as soon as it was published. Sarrazin takes the Bell Curve position that intelligence
correlates with ethnicity and race and warns that Muslims constitute a danger
in Germany and in Europe. But
Abdel-Samad insists it’s religion in its present form that is dangerous, and
that what we should be aiming for is helping Muslims to form a secular cultural
counterforce to Islam. There is no
reason to see them in hostile terms. As one who identifies himself as a secular Muslim, one might argue his very existence takes the punch out of Sarrazin's assertions.
On the other hand, Abdel-Samad also illustrates what happens when Germany's Leitkultur ("core - i.e., 'original German' culture") is exposed to those from without. What seems to disturb defenders of tradition most about Abdel-Samad’s views is his broad brush. He goes for the throat, not just of Islam, but of all three Abrahamic religions. He considers all of them to be evil forces based on a violent ideology. That said, though, he is particularly down on Islam and finds no meaningful
distinction to be made between Islam and Islamism. Always making a distinction between the ideology and the people who espouse it, however, he is quick to point out that it is possible to be a pious Muslim and dedicate oneself to democratic principles, albeit only by distancing oneself from Islam's essential teachings.
Most people
argue that religion is what you make of it, that Islamism is the term for the
radical literal fundamentalist forms of Islam, while the word Islam itself is
the blanket cover term for the entire history and culture of the Muslim
peoples. They insist that there is nothing “essentially” good or evil about religious
doctrine; it’s how it is interpreted and put into practice that matters. Some, like the Viennese political scientist Farid Hafez, argue
that Islamism shouldn’t be seen as a religious force at all, but a political
one, and contrasts it with Islam and its message of peace.
I’m starting this informal coverage of Islam in the
German-speaking countries with a review of the ideas of Abdel-Samad not because
I share his views (although I actually do, to a large degree at the moment) but
because I am more familiar with them and have a better chance, I believe, of
doing his views justice than I have with others in the field at present. And I am limiting myself to Germany and
Austria, and to a lesser degree the other German speaking countries, to keep the
discussion from getting too broad and out of hand.
A brief biography
Hamed Abdel-Samad was born in 1972, the third of five
children, in Giza, the part of Cairo where
the pyramids are located. He describes
his mother in glowing terms and his father as an intimidating patriarch who
regularly beat his wife, a man whose influence he felt the need to run
from. In time, however, Hamed’s father would
become one of his strongest supporters. He stopped preaching at one point when his son
became political and began to see himself as a failure as a husband and
father. But he then went back into the
pulpit to defend his son when a fatwa went out on him for his first book, The Fall of Islam. Hamed learned the Qur’an by heart as a child
and had been expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an
imam.
At the age of sixteen Hamed left home. Alone now in Cairo, he struggled to find an
identity of his own, first among Marxists, then, a year later, among the
members of the Muslim Brotherhood, where he became an ardent anti-Semite. The fiercely independent streak that led to a
quick disillusionment with the Marxists then worked its way again with the
Brotherhood. He tells the story of a
trip to the desert with a bunch of young recruits. In the stifling heat, all they had to eat was
an orange. “Peal the orange,” their
leader told them. “Now throw the orange
in the sand and eat the peel.”
It was at that moment, Hamed says, that he realized these
were people who would never have what it takes to run the world, that their
only followers would be people who could not or would not think for
themselves. This orientation to the
world was not for him. He would be a
free man.
While studying French and English at the university in Cairo
he took a job at the airport, where he met a German woman who invited him to
come live with her in Augsburg. He
jumped at the chance. She was eighteen
years his senior and the relationship quickly fell apart. For all sorts of reasons, apparently, and not
just because of the age difference.
In a biography of Abdel-Samad written by Henryk M. Broder
for Der Spiegel, Broder tells us that Abdel-Samad found Germany to be “a complicated machine
with no operating directions.” He
nonetheless threw himself into coming to terms with it, learned in the first
four months to swim and ride a bicycle, and make sense of new concepts such as
“overcoming the self” and “working on relationships.” In the process he managed to pass the qualifying exam for
political science at the University of Augsburg. His master’s project deals with the isolation
and humiliation Muslims feel in Germany, given their early religious
upbringing.
Hamed Abdel-Samad has published three books thus far dealing
with his own personal disillusionment with Islam and one on politics in the
Arab world. Mein Abschied vom Himmel: aus dem Leben eines Muslims in Deutschland (My
Departure from Heaven: From the life of a Muslim in Germany), came out in
2009, followed by Der Untergang der
islamischen Welt: Eine Prognose (The Downfall of the Islamic World: A Prognosis)
in 2010. His book on the Arab
revolution followed in 2011 with the title, Krieg
oder Frieden (War or Peace). In
2013, a television round table discussion with Abdel-Samad and two others
(Herfried Münkler and Juli Zehon) on the future of politics would lead to a
book with the title of Was steht zur
Wahl? (What are the choices?) The
following year, in 2014, he would publish Der
Islamische Faschismus: Eine Analyse (Islamic Fascism: An Analysis).
Today, Abdel-Samad is the chief voice in Germany (and,
probably elsewhere, as well) for the view that Europe ought to cease and desist
concerning itself with Islam and whether it is compatible with Western
values. It isn’t, he claims. Rather, he says, they should put those
energies to work helping assure that Muslims who have come north in search of
freedom and opportunity have every opportunity to get what they came for.
Whether you agree with him or not, he speaks with some
authority on Islam. He has spent a
lifetime building on his early knowledge of the Qur’an, and religion and
politics more generally. At one point he broke off his quest for understanding
how Germany works and went off to Japan, where he met and married his present
wife, a Danish citizen with a Japanese mother, a student of philosophy with a
special interest in Sartre and Kierkegaard.
After working for a time with UNESCO in Geneva, he joined the department
of Islamic Studies at the University of Erfurt, then the Institute for Textbook
Research in Braunschweig, and eventually, in 2008, at the Institute for Jewish
History and Culture at the University of Munich, where he began to repair from the
anti-Semitism (“although I had never met a Jew”) of his youth. In Munich, his dissertation dealt with the
image of Jews in Arab textbooks.
Hamed is a member of the Giordano Bruno Society, a non-profit group working to support the notion of evolutionary humanism. One of the groups they support is the Central Council of Ex-Muslims.
Hamed is also a regular lecturer on the intersection of
politics and religion in Islam and the place of Muslims in Germany and a
frequent guest in interviews and debates and talk show discussions. To get an idea of the breath of his exposure,
type in Hamed Abdel-Samad on the YouTube search line. Over 10,000 entries will show up. Fortunately, for English-speakers, some of
these are available with English subtitles.
This one, for example, a lecture given to the Giordano Bruno Society in
Hamburg on the topic of his latest book, Islamic
Fascism.
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