In the towns and villages of Bosnia, Muslims and Christians lived peacefully together for
many centuries.
They were close neighbours, often friends.
Sometimes they married across the boundaries of religion.
When they died, they were even buried alongside one another.
In the spring of 1992, when Bosnia declared its independence from the rest of Yugoslavia,
Serbian fighters suddenly turned on their Muslim neighbours, destroying entire communities,
determined to expunge every vestige of Muslim occupation from the land.
Amid reports of mass murder and rape, hundreds of thousands of Muslims fled their homes.
After long and terrible journeys, many of the Muslims found temporary shelter in improvised
refugee camps.
The horror of what they had endured stayed with them.
In the village of Zava, we fled to another village.
After a month, we had to run again to the other village of Bišćan.
After Bacolor, we settled here, but we didn't have 먹.
We escaped.
When we broke our bodies we ran from the temporary shelter again.
We heard that they are raping girls and everything.
It makes me ask, is this another crusade? The last crusade?
Whatever their feelings about Saddam Hussein, millions of Muslims were appalled by the
of their fellow Muslims at the hands of the Western allies during the Gulf War.
The humiliation was made worse by the way the images of defeat were instantly relayed
all over the Muslim world through the medium of television.
To Westerners, pop videos like this may seem like harmless entertainment.
To Muslims, this too is part of a cultural crusade against Islam.
The message is godless, hedonistic, seductive.
It repels even as it fascinates.
Many of us see it as an attack on our moral values.
In a big city like Cairo, the bright lights promise the joys of the Western-style consumer society.
Copy our ways, the lights seem to say, enjoy our products and be like us.
It's a process known as cultural colonialism, hooking the poor to the Western way of life.
And to Muslims, some aspects of that way are absolutely unacceptable.
Is it surprising that many Muslims should want to reject it?
We have been colonised for long, we have been treated as a third world,
we have been deprived of a good share in running world affairs.
We want to assert our role and to insist on our identity.
The means of doing this is to go back to your own culture.
So Islam is not only a religion, it's a source of identity, it is a whole culture and the way of life.
To an increasing number of Muslims, resisting the West means opposing their own governments.
It's not modernisation which these cultists are opposed to,
but the secular influences which they believe undermine their faith.
In the West, they are often called fundamentalists.
But it's more accurate to think of them as Muslim activists, dedicated to the creation of an Islamic society.
In Egypt and through much of the Middle East, the most influential of these often banned organisations is the Muslim Brotherhood.
We have a good situation in some countries, such as here in Egypt.
We are banned, but we can share in the political activity.
We were elected in the last election in the People's Assembly in 1987,
and we were represented by 37 members in that assembly.
That's our situation now, but we are still acting and we can't stop because we know that that is a matter of religion.
We are a religious organisation and we can't stop because we haven't a licence. We are acting.
To counter the influences which devout men perceive to be evil or impure,
it's the duty of all good Muslims to practice jihad, struggle, to purify the faith.
Jihad can take many forms, ranging from quiet inner struggle to cleanse the individual's own soul,
to all-out war against the enemies of Islam.
600 years ago, a great Arab scholar, Ibn Khaldun, who taught at the ancient University of Al-Azhar in Cairo,
expounded a theory of revolutionary jihad.
When the great cities and their rulers become corrupt and begin to slide away from strict observance of Islam,
a new wave of devout believers sweep in from the countryside to cleanse the rotten centre.
This cycle of decay and rebirth has been repeated again and again throughout the history of Islam.
And the idea of jihad continues to inspire modern Islamic revolutionaries.
Some of the young men, even at a conservative seat of learning like Al-Azhar, will embrace ideas of revolutionary jihad.
When they go back to their own countries, they will take their ideas with them.
Northern Nigeria is 90% Muslim, and Kano is perhaps the most devout city in Nigeria.
This is the morning prayer that marks the end of the month of Ramadan.
Half a million men are gathered at the city's open-air prayer ground.
Despite the splendour of their festival robes, most northern Nigerians are poor, far poorer than the Christians in the oil-rich southern provinces.
And as their poverty has increased, so their commitment to Islam has deepened.
But this is only the climax of a long period of spiritual preparation.
During Ramadan, men of the Qadiriyya Brotherhood, one of the Sufi sects, which are very strong in northern Nigeria, go into a deep trance as they chant phrases from the Holy Quran.
Membership of groups like this has grown enormously in the last few years.
Tafsir, the reading and interpretation of the Holy Quran, is another part of the spiritual preparation during Ramadan.
And this goes on throughout every evening of the month-long fast, and on almost every street corner in Kano.
Here, Tafsir is being conducted in one of the palace courtyards of the Amir of Kano.
The Amir once held almost absolute power in the city, but after colonization by the British, his powers were greatly reduced.
And now, since independence, they are largely ceremonial.
But the Amir still has considerable spiritual authority over his devout citizens.
This annual festival is one occasion when the Amir's ceremonial role commands attention.
He rides out from his palace to receive the homage of his people.
This is more than an empty show.
The occasion symbolizes, for many, the Islamic belief that religion and politics are one.
Two hundred years ago, the Muslim kingdoms of northern Nigeria were overthrown in a jihad.
A spiritual leader, Usman Danfodio, led faithful Muslim warriors from their remote villages in the countryside in a holy war to cleanse the cities of corruption.
Danfodio deposed the old kings and appointed devout and just men as Amirs, spiritual as well as temporal rulers.
Today, political power lies elsewhere.
Nigeria's government controls the whole federation, half Christian, half Muslim, under a secular constitution.
The system is widely perceived as corrupt and is deeply resented by many Muslims who want to abolish secular rule and restore Islamic government in northern Nigeria.
The Amir awaits the homage of local traditional leaders.
They charge towards him to show their loyalty, steering their horses to one side at the last moment.
It is a faint echo of the jihad of Usman Danfodio.
Many Muslims now believe that it is time for a new jihad to cleanse the cities of today.
Muslim activists believe that Nigeria is a client state of the West.
Colonialists no longer rule directly, but they exercise power through commercial and diplomatic pressure.
What Muslims see of Westerners does not encourage confidence.
Westerners show scant respect for Muslim sensibilities.
They export the worst of Western culture and Muslims want no part of it.
But there are few ways in which ordinary people can express their anger and frustration.
The only available target, sadly, is the Christian church.
Muslims see the Christian church as the spiritual legacy of colonialism.
Colonialists imported Christianity.
They educated Christians and gave them favored positions in the administration.
Most Christians are migrant traders from the oil-rich south of the country,
and they are resented by Muslim northerners, who see them as representatives of an oppressive regime
with its power base in the rich southern states.
When the Christians in Kano tried to build a new church to meet the needs of a growing congregation,
they asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, then Robert Runcie, to lay the foundation stone.
One night, Muslim rioters stormed the half-finished building.
Government forces quelled the riot and shot several Muslims.
Muslim anger against Christians increased.
Sheikh Zaghzaki is a leading opponent of the government and a devout Muslim activist.
He and his followers are opposed to Christian influence because they believe that secular government is a Christian concept.
The system itself, the very system which is now ruling the country, is said to be secular.
And secularism itself is a Christian concept, which the Christians trace to the biblical saying,
give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. So it's a sort of Christian ideology which has been applied to rule the country.
So the Christians became more or less protected by the system itself.
So whenever the Muslims say anything, they just say that it is contradictory to the principle that is running the country.
They just feel that there shouldn't be Muslims at all.
There have been many anti-Christian riots in Kano.
Many churches and many Christian-owned buildings have been destroyed throughout northern Nigeria.
And when each new riot is put down by the military authorities,
some Muslims inevitably see the armed forces as instruments of government oppression.
And so resentment grows.
In this atmosphere, it is perhaps surprising that the Christians decided to invite a charismatic German preacher named Reinhard K.
to preach in the city in the summer of 1991.
Muslims reacted sharply.
There was the burning of cars and the beating of people.
People were running helter-skelter in the market.
So the battle line then became the Muslims and the Christians.
And depending on your attire, if you were dressed like in your shirt and trousers,
that classified you as a Christian.
And then you were attacked.
The Christians didn't attack at that time.
Later, the people that lived in that area of town decided to respond and to protect their properties.
And it resulted in a confrontation, a face-to-face fight.
Christian rioters in turn set fire to this mosque and left it gutted.
As touching evidence of the tenacity of their faith,
the local Muslims continued to use the burned mosque for their daily prayers.
Muslims far outnumber Christians in northern Nigeria and everywhere there's evidence of increasing devotion, increasing commitment to Islam.
New mosques go up on all sides.
Quran schools flourish on every street corner.
The boys who attend these Quran schools beg for money from passing motorists.
They depend on the coins they beg for survival.
They have nothing but a simple burning faith and a strong sense of deprivation.
In December 1991, boys like these were among the rioters who burned and looted Christian buildings all over Kano.
Some Muslims talk of jihad against Christians because they see Christians as representatives of a corrupt system.
Despite their small numbers in the north, some Christians can also sound aggressive.
Jihad? Well, we also have a Christian equivalent of jihad, which we call crusade.
Crusade is holy war by Christians.
So if there should be a jihad, there might be the necessity to also evolve a crusade.
So I don't think that we fear jihad.
These seven-year-olds are training for jihad, not just a spiritual struggle, but revolution against a state which they are taught to see as tyrannical, corrupt and unjust to Muslims.
They are the infant vanguard of Sheikh Zakzaki's revolutionary organization.
For a Muslim, a revolution is a must.
The revolution only needs to change the supremacy.
If you say that the supremacy belongs to Allah and no other law should contradict the Quran, which should be recognized as the supreme law.
Under that law, a constitution can be made.
There can be a parliament to make laws, but the laws can never contradict the supreme law of the Almighty Allah, who is recognized as the supreme Lord of the nation.
So that's the need for jihad, which will change this order.
Sheikh Zakzaki's mission is to spread the word for jihad against the government in towns and villages throughout northern Nigeria.
His supporters are enthusiastic and vociferous.
Among the desperately poor farmers of the rural north, Zakzaki's message goes down well.
Not surprisingly, it is not so well received by the government, and Zakzaki has been arrested and imprisoned many times.
The message he brings to the people that Islam is the answer to all their problems is gaining more and more support in northern Nigeria.
Zakzaki's movement is not large, but they can still command quite impressive numbers for their annual Al-Quds march.
To activists like these, Jerusalem, Israel, Western capitalism and their own government are all manifestations of the last crusade, a capitalist, Zionist, imperialist conspiracy to deny Muslims their rights.
In Nigeria, the activists are still only a small minority, but there are many who share their convictions all over the Muslim world.
In Iran, feeling against Israel and the United States runs high.
The symbol of the Dome of the Rock signifies for Muslims everywhere the fact that the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is in the hands of the enemy.
It's not just extremists who think like this. Even I, who believe in the Sufi motto, peace with all, understand the passion which makes my own country forbid me to cross this small barrier.
I'm standing on a bridge on the River Jordan, and just behind me, a few yards away, is the country known as Israel in the West, but to most Muslims, occupied Palestine.
And only an hour's drive from here is Jerusalem for Muslims, Al-Quds, one of the three holiest places in Islam.
But although it's so near, I cannot visit it. The political consequences of Israel's occupation of Al-Quds makes the pilgrimage impossible for me.
And the sense of injustice, of frustration, for me, is shared by millions of Muslims all over the world.
You know, Muslims had a very bitter experience with the Crusades, and some Muslims today view the creation of Israel in Palestine in 1948 as a repetition of the Crusades nightmare in the medieval times.
This is Muvitun.
The scene is near Jericho, one of the camps for Arab refugees. The story is one of destitution.
For these people, as the result of the war in Palestine, have either fled or been expelled from their homes and their livelihood.
The Arab refugee problem is a very big one. For those in need, are said to number over half a million.
Forty-five years after the foundation of Israel, many of those evicted Palestinians are still living in refugee camps like these.
Life here is harsh. There's nothing for most people to do except mourn the past and long for the liberation of their homeland.
What kind of a future do these young boys have? The United Nations provides a basic education and basic welfare for their survival.
But they are stateless, impoverished, and unlikely ever to find a job.
And when they grow, they may blame the politicians, the West, the world, for their plight.
For many, Islam provides certainty, and above all, hope.
But here faith is combined with a burning sense of injustice.
Is it surprising then that many of these young boys may one day join the ranks of the so-called terrorists and become soldiers of Hamas or Islamic Jihad?
Hamas and Islamic Jihad are two of the so-called terrorist organizations struggling against the state of Israel.
But the difference between them and the older PLO is that the new agenda for Palestinians is Islamic.
So if confrontation between Islam and the West must come, it is here, in Jerusalem, that it seems most nearly inevitable.
This saddens me because the Holy Quran teaches us that Christians and Jews are both peoples of the Book.
And Muslims must respect their beliefs.
Historically, the three faiths have shared the same city with comparatively little friction.
Muslims frequently point out that Christians and Jews lived and worshipped here during hundreds of years of Muslim rule.
For most of those years, they lived in peace.
Now, even at prayers, Israeli soldiers carry their guns.
The mosque which Muslims call the Dome of the Rock stands on the rock which the Jews call the Temple Mount, the site of Solomon's Temple,
twice destroyed in ancient times, which they believe must be rebuilt to herald the coming of the Jewish Messiah.
But to Muslims, the whole area is a mosque. It is Al-Aqsa, the third most sacred place in Islam.
Trouble erupted here in November 1990, following the announcement by militant Zionists that they would rebuild the temple.
You know very well on the Temple Mount were two temples.
First, the Temple of King Solomon, the second of the Temple of Zerubbabel and King Herod.
And this is the third temple which will be the last temple.
We are staying here before the cornerstone for the third temple,
the first cornerstone which Israelis, Jews, decided to put on the Temple Mount as the first stone for the third temple.
Most of the Muslims were unarmed, but they put up a desperate battle, fearful that their mosque would be destroyed.
The Israeli army stormed Al-Aqsa and killed at least 30 young Muslims.
Today, thousands of tourists flock to Al-Aqsa to see the sites.
Most of them know nothing of the history of Islam, and their Muslim guides are too tactful to point out the bullet holes
which still scar the walls of the Dome of the Rock, let alone the scrawled emblem of the militant Muslim organization, Hamas.
Many of the Muslims who come here to pray, once the tourists have gone, are offended at this invasion of their holy places.
The prayer hall of Al-Aqsa has been here for a thousand years.
There are many who would give their lives to defend it.
Jerusalem is not the only city where Muslims feel their holy places are under siege.
The Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron is built within the walls of an ancient Jewish shrine, Machbela.
The site is holy to both faiths because Jews and Muslims both believe that the Old Testament patriarchs and matriarchs are buried here.
By day, especially on Fridays, it is a place of worship for Muslims.
They must run the gauntlet of Israeli soldiers just to get inside.
By night, the same place becomes a place of pilgrimage for Jewish schoolgirls.
The girls are in festive mood, but as always they have an armed escort.
They gather first for a lecture on the history of the shrine.
Its place in their religion and in their national identity are both underlined.
It was here four thousand years ago, but the Jewish people have been telling this story for thousands of years.
What is the significance of Machbela? What is the significance of building this place?
Why are Jews in all generations and if they don't pray?
So Israeli girls studied Jewish scripture in an all-night vigil by the tombs of Isaac and Rebecca inside the building which has for nine centuries been a mosque.
For centuries, Jews were forbidden to worship here, but Muslims have no objections to Jewish prayers as such.
What they fear is that the Jews will one day evict them.
In a small but significant gesture against Jewish claims to the sacred place,
the Muslim authorities have carefully defaced the star of David emblem on the tombs of the patriarchs.
Muslim fears that they may be evicted from their sacred places are not unfounded.
Many mosques, like this one at Jaffa, have had to be abandoned after the local Muslims were forced to flee their homes.
As if to add insult to injury, young Israelis despot themselves on the nearby beaches in a way that is deeply offensive to devout people of all three faiths.
In Jerusalem, Jews have bought many Muslim houses, imposing a strong Jewish presence in the holy city.
Again, it isn't the Jewish faith which Muslims object to, it's militant Zionism, Israeli nationalistic fervour and the military force which goes with it.
The constant presence of Israeli soldiers, the constant harassment, is the greatest provocation to young men who now see themselves not just as Palestinians, but as Muslims.
And as long as they believe that Israel has the support of the West, there's a growing conviction that Israel and the West are united against Islam.
There's one obvious response, and some Muslims will make it.
All over occupied Palestine, groups of young Muslims, like these in a Bethlehem mosque, are learning martial skills coupled with zeal for Islam.
Even little children, like these in Jerusalem, are learning to chant Islamic slogans in the cause of the liberation of Palestine.
There are also protests against the secular, hedonistic Western lifestyle, which is the seductive side of the last crusade.
This is an Islamic march against drugs.
In these young people's hearts, the only answer to all their problems is a revived and fervent Islam.
Arab nationalism and regional nationalism have been a gigantic fiasco.
The only hope left for Arabs and Muslims is Islam.
And more people all over the world, not just in Palestine, are turning to Islam as a saviour from the problems and disasters befalling them all over the world.
Harsh Israeli responses, like the forced exile of 400 members of Hamas, only increase the zeal of the Hamas members themselves and of their supporters.
A few years ago, Palestinian freedom fighters fought only for their land.
Now, they fight for Islam.
Predictably, the intifada, which had been flagging under Israeli pressure, revived with the exile of the Hamas supporters.
This demonstration by the Islamic Jihad organization is at the funeral of just such a boy, shot dead for throwing stones at an army truck.
Friends and sympathizers shake hands with the boy's relatives.
His elder brother vows to continue the struggle.
Most of these young militants have probably never done any more than throw stones.
But every act of oppression which they experience will only stiffen their resolve.
One day, the stones may become bullets.
They are the leaders of the Muslims. They are turning people to God. And in that matter, a man who gets killed in a battle in Islam, he is a shaheed. He is alive in heaven.
They are turning back their rights. They don't depend on politicians anymore and they don't believe in leaders of the country anymore.
And that's what I say, that they will become more and more and it won't be the stone of Islam here only. It might be in all the Mediterranean countries.
The tragedy is that devout Muslims find it impossible to achieve their ends by conventional political means.
In Algeria, Muslim leaders stood for parliament with an Islamic agenda. They had the backing of the majority of the population.
On the eve of the election, the army stopped the poll, arrested the leaders and declared martial law.
The country has been in a state of unrest ever since, with killings on both sides, arbitrary arrest, imprisonment without trial.
Similar measures against so-called Muslim extremists have been taken in many Muslim countries, when secular governments seek to exclude activists from political power.
The result is increasing confrontation, increasing violence.
Islamic Revival is not a reaction against the West. It is a reaction against the past situation in the Islamic world itself. The West interferes when it packs the government against this Islamic Revival.
Here comes the rule of the West. If the West respects the will of the people, Islamic people, there is no reaction against the West.
The great majority of Muslims don't want revolution. They simply want to be able to follow their religion in peace and lead lives of modest prosperity.
But prosperity eludes them. Their faith seems to be under attack from outside forces, which they feel powerless to oppose.
It seems clear to me that in times of crisis, the voice of moderation, the middle way that lies at the heart of Islam, falls on deaf ears.
We Muslims, moderate Muslims suffer most. So the phenomenon is there, but it is not directed against the West.
So it is high time, at this junction of human development, that people in the West and people in the Muslim world realize that they have much in common and that they have a role to play.
It is not something to contribute. All we are asking for is to be accepted in this new club, to be integrated within the efforts to universalize human culture,
without relinquishing our own identity. Because if we relinquish our own identity, we will simply be useless.
The Muslim World
Back in Bosnia, Muslims are redefining their identity and rediscovering their religion, not in joy, but in sorrow.
They have found themselves the victims in a war of extermination, which to them has all the hallmarks of a crusade.
And after more than a year of vacillation, the Western powers have done nothing to stop the slaughter.
Who can be surprised if there are now some voices calling for a jihad?
Bosnians, Palestinians, Kashmiris, Algerians, it seems to be open season for Muslims.
If Western governments seem to be willing to allow Muslim communities to be exterminated, if they seem always to side with regimes hostile to Islam,
then the so-called Muslim militants will gain credibility.
Slowly but surely, the West itself will be seen as the enemy.
But whatever bitterness they may feel at the sluggish response from the West,
Muslims also know that many Westerners have risked their lives to bring humanitarian relief to the refugees.
It is European volunteers who are feeding the people in many camps like this,
and a Jewish financier has given 33 million pounds for the Bosnian refugees.
Despite everything they have suffered, these people know that not all Westerners are automatically against them.
But how long will that small fund of gratitude and goodwill survive?
At the moment, there is still time.
Muslims are not extremists, but ordinary people wanting to live peaceful lives.
If non-Muslim governments understand Muslim aspirations, respect Muslim sensitivities, show compassion for Muslim sufferings,
then there is no reason why differences in faith in themselves should be a cause of conflict.
What is needed, easy to say, difficult to achieve, is mutual understanding.
Let us hope that this series of programs is a small step along that path.
Thank you.