From Mark Steyn, a crystalline summation of the reasons to fight Islamist terrorism here and now, rather than later:
So we’re living through a period of extraordinarily rapid demographic and cultural change that broadly favors the Islamists’ stated objectives, a period of rapid technological advance that greatly facilitates the Islamists’ objectives, and a period of rapid nuclear dissemination that will add serious heft to the realization of their objectives. If the West – and I use the term in the widest sense to mean not just swaggering Texas cowboys but sensitive left-wing feminists in favor of gay marriage – is to survive, it will only be after a long struggle lasting many decades.
The Islamist ideology is profoundly inconsistent with life as we now live it in the West (which includes all that libertarians hold dear, as well as much that we like to decry). Indeed, it is hard to find any aspect of their ideology that is consistent with the West. Because Islamism is inherently exclusionary and expansive (unlike, say, Buddhism), it cannot coexist in the long run with the West, so conflict at some level is inevitable. In a purely cultural and economic contest, the Islamists were doomed, which undoubtedly explains their decision to escalate their struggle with the West to the level of terminal violence.
Steyn notes that demographics indicate that the Islamists are not going to just fade away. Further, unlike crackpot groups in times past, modern transport and communications technology means that Islamists cannot be held at a safe distance from Western societies. So much is historical fact.
Based on what we have seen to date, and setting aside the question of WMDs altogether, I am quite comfortable with the conclusion that the Islamists pose a threat to liberty that cannot be ignored or tolerated. The demonstrated ability and willingness of Islamist terrorists to inflict catastrophic damage on Western societies will eventually lead to either the subjugation of those societies or to their transformation into defensively closed and unfree societies.
I think the question of whether to deal with Islamism on less than a war footing was settled on 9/11/01. The only remaining question is how best to win this war.
I often hear commentators state that Muslims in the Middle East ‘hate’ Western ideals, but in my experience that only appears to be true of more fundamentalist elements of the faith. I’ve seldom seen or heard many moderate Muslims state that Western values are decadent. If anything, many moderate Muslims wouldn’t agree with the views of Bin Laden or the oppressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
The problem is that “moderates”, which maybe exist in the Arab ME, keep very quiet. You almost never hear them denounce Islamism and extremist, terrorist militancy. Even those “moderates” (like Edward Said) which live and work in the west for dozens of years have great “understanding” and support for the fanatics.
“If anything, many moderate Muslims wouldn’t agree with the views of Bin Laden or the oppressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan.”
How do you know this ? You imagine so ? Why don’t they speak out loud and clear? Why don’t they protest?Why don’t they take action to remove the Islamists from power and influence in Arab countries ? I don’t know if many “moderates” exist in the Arab world, but anyway, we cannot rely on them to curb the Islamist wave.
Chris – you will note that I am very careful never to refer to Muslims, but only to Islamists.
I don’t have a clue what the vast majority of Muslims think about Islamists, but the Islamists are quite vocal about their desires.
The question was settled, I agree.
Getting a majority of people in the West – much less a unanimity – to acknowledge the right answer is the real problem. Many will never admit it, just as most former pro-communist liberals & leftists either pretend they were anti-communist all along, argue that communism really was a great system, just that it was plagued by a few bad apples; or simply deny entirely that it has failed abjectly.
On the other front of the war, I am happy to report that a good number of moderate Muslims are speaking out in the U.S. One of the largest advocacy groups, ADC and their members, are leading the charge on this – and contrary to Robert Reich’s premise about religion v. non-religion being the fight of the next century, ADC is doing so in the context of an inter-faith effort.
Naturally, this isn’t being well covered in the press, probably because it doesn’t fit the script. Yes, even if the Bushies don’t think it’s a war on Islam and Arabs (and we should win) the NYT thinks it’s a war on Islam and Arabs (and they should win).
Arrgh.
I used to think that come the revolution, us lawyers would be the first ones lined up against the wall and shot.
Now I realize that the lawyer-haters will be unlikely to beat me and the rest of the mass media haters to the nearest wall with our shotguns…
It is noticeable that when the followers of Osama bin Laden film themselves cutting off the heads of non-combatants, they seek to extinguish the still small voice of their conscience by shouting out the name of God [who they call Allah]. Either they believe Allah to be Satan or they do not believe that God – in the sense of objective goodness – exists. An act of moral goodness does not require you to blank out your conscience.
You could argue that they exist in such a primitive state of mind that they view the taking of life as worship. You do not have to go back very far in European history before you find people being burnt to death in the name of God, and it is possible that they believe that exploding a bomb in a marketplace is an act of devotion, possible but unlikely.
The people who decided to murder over 3000 people in New York came from the most educated strata of their societies. To seek to comprehend their actions with reference to a medieval Islamic conceptions is to neglect the extent to which they are a product of modernity.
The ideology that motivates the followers of Osama bin Laden is rooted more in European Romanticism than it is in Islamic medieval conceptions of God. I think that Waller R. Newell explains it well in an article that is available on the internet called “Post-Modern Jihad: What Osama Bin Laden learnt from the Left” which I have just read.
Waller R. Newell claims that to understand Osama Bin Laden we ought to remind ourselves of the work of Heidegger, a Nazi who inspired several generations of European leftists. For Heidegger the Nazi party rejected alienating modernity and sought a return to authenticity. Heidegger, drawing upon earlier sources such as Nietzsche going all the way back to Rousseau, influenced French post-war Left apologists for Stalin and Mao such as Sartre, and via the Algerian writer Frantz Fanon whose book on the Third World “The Wretched of the Earth” (1961) it influenced Middle Eastern radicals.
Many of the leaders of the Shiite revolution in Iran that deposed the Shah had studied Fanon’s brand of Marxism. The Sorbonne educated Ali Shari’at – who many consider the intellectual father of the Shiite revolution – translated “The Wretched of the Earth” and Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness into Persian.” Following Fanon, writers such as Lin Piao, ideologist of the Red Guards in China, and Pol Pot justified revolution as a therapeutic act by non-Western peoples. Violence will purge the people of egoism and hedonism and it will serve to return them to a collective of self-sacrifice. They would regain the dignity lost due to Western oppression and materialism, selfishness, and immorality.
Many elements in the ideology of al Qaeda – see the 1996 “Declaration of War Against America” by Bin Laden – derive from this same mix. Just as Pol Pot wanted Cambodia to return to the Year Zero, so Osama bin Laden dreams of returning his world to the supposed purity of seventh-century Islam.
Osama bin Laden is poorly educated in Islamic theology. A wealthy playboy in his youth, he fell under the influence of radical Arab intellectuals who blended calls for Marxist revolution with calls for a pure Islamic state. Many were imprisoned and executed. Sayyid Qutb for example, a major figure in Islamic fundamentalism was executed in Egypt in 1965. His intellectual progeny such as Fathi Yakan liken the coming Islamic revolution to the French and Russian revolutions. The influence of Qutb’s “Signposts on the Road” (1964) is clearly traceable in pronouncements by Islamic Jihad. The tract by Yasser Arafat’s terrorist organization Al Fatah “The Revolution and Violence” has been called “a selective précis of ‘The Wretched of the Earth.’
While Al Fatah still used the language of class struggle, the increasingly radical groups that succeeded it blended Fanon with calls to revive a strict Islamic social order. “We declare,” says the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah in its “Open Letter to the Downtrodden in Lebanon and the World” (1985), “that we are a nation that fears only God” and will not accept “humiliation from America and its allies and the Zionist entity that has usurped the sacred Islamic land.” While Qutb concentrated on revolution in Muslim countries, Osama directs his struggle outward against American ‘hegemony’.
Waller R. Newell notes that French intellectuals have taken heart from Islamic terrorists who seemed close to achieving the longed-for revolution against American ‘hegemony’. Consider Foucault and Derrida, two leading avatars of post-modernism.
Foucault was sent by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera to observe the Iranian revolution and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Like Sartre, who had rhapsodized over the Algerian revolution, Foucault was enthralled, pronouncing Khomeini “a kind of mystic saint.” The Frenchman welcomed “Islamic government” as a new form of “political spirituality” that could inspire Western radicals to combat capitalist hegemony.
For Foucault as for Fanon, Hezbollah, and Osama bin Laden, the purpose of violence is not to relieve poverty or adjust borders. Violence is an end in itself. It is exalted by Foucault as “the craving, the taste, the capacity, the possibility of an absolute sacrifice.”
Derrida reacted to the collapse of the Soviet Union by calling for a “new international.” Whereas the old international was made up of the economically oppressed, the new one would be “the dispossessed and the marginalized” all uniting to combat American-led globalization.
In the recent Leftist pot boiler “Empire” Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri seek to depict the American dominated global order as today’s version of the bourgeoisie, and Islamist terrorism as a spearhead of “the post-modern revolution” against “the new imperial order.” Why? Because of “its refusal of modernity as a weapon of Euro-American hegemony.”
What the terrorists have in common with European nihilists is a belief in the primacy of the radical will, unrestrained by traditional moral teachings. That is how al Qaeda finds it so easy to ignore the teachings of mainstream Islam, which prohibits the deliberate killing of non-combatants, and slaughter innocents in the name of creating a utopia.
We know “Osama” has been THE most popular name in certain Muslim countries, following 9/11.
In fact, I recall a CNN program in the spring of 2002, interviewing teenaged Egyptians who want to study in the US, love our movies and games, but still want to fight with OBL and wage Jihad against the West.
Also – apparently “Allah Akbar” does not only mean “God is Great” (as it is cinssitently translated into English). It also means “Our God is Greater [than any other God].” Infer from this what you will, but I am gratefull that the US – together with Britain under PM Blair – is willing to be adult in this situation and take the lead for a progessive and freer future for the oppressed, and a safer future for the rest.
Thanks for the post, Robert.
-Orson,
Colorado, USA
Chris Goodman:
Thank you for a very informative and excellent post.
Osama and Muhamad Atta were not ignorant and primitive desert muhllas. They were people educated in the west. (Some education ! – here is the embodiment of the values you absorb in western universities.)
This terrorism isn’t a purely muslim Islamist invention – it is rather a synthesis of Islam with Marxism. That’s also why there is so much sympathy to it in the tranzi circles.
Perry:
I think CHris’ post is very important and deserves a separate item on the main blog, with links added to the articles mentioned !
Here is the link to Newell’s article
A must read.
You have stated the situation clearly and described the only possible outcomes of this struggle.
Now if we could just see this reprinted in the New York Times, front page, above the fold… (Wakes up, damn…)
Good article, thanks.
Sorry to nitpick Orson, but Islam – as with Christianity and Judaism – is monotheistic. To infer “God is greater than any other God” from “Allah Akbar” makes no sense. Regarding earlier comments, isn’t it in the way of things that we don’t often hear of moderates in any walk of life, but do hear stories about extremists? I’d say this probably says more about the agendas of news editors than anything else: That said, it is perhaps a sign of the times that a march by muslim moderates in Bradford earlier this year was of itself considered a newsworthy event by several media channels.
So… that means we add France to the list?
Fine by me.
And yes, an extremely interesting article by Mr. Goodman.
Who ever you are that wrote this article shows how stupid and ignorant you are. You have absolutely no clue about islam and the islamic people. You are as dumb as a dog that is told to jump while not even knowing why. It is people like you the US government depends heavily on to continue its lies and deceptions. One good news for all of you americans that share the same values as this nazi-zionist money hungry regime is that in the history of the world civilization there has never been an empire that has lasted forever. You will bring your own destruction open yourself.
Rudolph writes:
“I’d say this probably says more about the agendas of news editors than anything else”
It depends on the media in question. Certainly, in the UK, Leftist newspapers and the BBC have gone out of their ways to propagate ‘moderate’ Muslim opinion.
Without, it has to be said, conspicuous success.
Such ‘moderate’ commentary as there has been seems to have been hissed out through clenched teeth and, usually, hedged around with bucketloads of apologia and thinly-veiled (oops!) excuses for the bestial behaviour of extremists.
A sceptic might conclude that there is, in fact, remarkably little ‘moderate’ opinion out there at all.
I always find it amusing that a country that has, more than any other, provided a safe haven for Jewish people, that has welcomed and celebrated Jewish culture, that has more than any other supported the right of Israel to live in peace and freedom, is dscribed as “nazi” by people like George. That alone speaks volumes about the intellectual disintegration of the postmodern left.
Islam has a nihlistic tradition that far pre-dates Heidigger, etc. Remember the Assassins and the Khjarites were products of Islamic tradition. Of the four esteemed men (roughly equivalent in stature to the 12 Apostles of Christianity) who succeeded Muhammad as leader of the Muslim nation, three were assassinated by political rivals. Muhammad’s two grandsons were also murdered by Muslim political rivals.
You will often hear today’s Islamists repeat like a mantra “We love death as much as you (infidels) love life.” This did not come from Marx or Sartre or any European existentialist. It came from Khalid Bin Al-Walid, an early Muslim general who is greatly esteemed in Islam, who uttered those words as a warning to the Persian Empire before the Arab Muslim holy warriors eviscerated it.
Chris’s post made a number of excellent points, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Islam already has a long nihlistic tradition to draw from; whatever the Islamists imported from Europe already had a good foundation to build upon.
George,
Even though I was raised Catholic and my forebears were Scots & Irish, I’ll be happy to call myself a monstrous Nazi subhuman pile of Zionist filth – if that’s what being a free trade advocate, supporter of democracy and an enemy of Islamofascism is properly called these days.
To tell the truth, I’m pretty happy to stand by the Jews, Israelis, Zionists, foaming-at-the-mouth-little-Arab-boy-eating-fiends, whatever you and your pals want to call them. I wouldn’t ordinarily say that I’m friends with any particular racial or religious group. And Lord knows, the Israeli government has a lot of blood on its hands. But seeing the truly impressive lineup of people who are doing their utmost to revive 1930’s Germany style Jew-hatred, makes me pretty confident that standing by Israel, Judaism and ethnic Jews right now, is the right thing to do. I don’t feel great about it; I really don’t believe in “group” anything, but I’ll not sit idly by while your ilk whip up the troops for a good old fashioned, UN and World-Court sanctioned pogrom. There is opposition to your viewpoint, George, because you are wrong, and because you are on the side of the monsters.
george – re-read my comment above. Remember the cardinal rule of posting:
First, read.
Then, think.
Only then, post.
R.C. –
Please. Go back and read GEORGE’s post now.
You’re expecting that creature to think? Thinking is so passe. It’s all about feeling. I FEEL America and Bush are evil, ergo they are…. Thinking…. logic… reason…. historical fact…………. huh?
Think? T’scha!!
George, you might just be confused, or perhaps you suffer from mild dyslexia, and misunderstood the subject of the post under discussion.
The subject is “Islamists”. Not Islam. “Islamists” refers to adherents of a totalitarian ideology built upon an Islamic theme, but which is assumed by people of good will in civilised nations to not be representative of the actual religion, Islam, itself.
At least you’d better hope so, little buddy. There are those in the civilised nations who, accurately, point out awkward little details, such as the fact that Islam is the only one of the major world religions whose figure of veneration is a conquering general, who presided over massacres of helpless captives, the enslavement of his fellow man, and some fairly detestable domestic arrangements. Pray to the G-d that made you that the Islamists are the problem, and not Islam itself.
Nobody lied about New York City, or Bali, or Madrid. Nobody lied about human bombs seeking out schoolbuses and pizza parlors before they pulled the pin. Nobody lied about bound captives having their living heads sawed off while they screamed. Nobody lied about Muslims killed by Islamist terrorists. Nobody lied about Muslims engaged, in the 21st Century, in genocide and the slave trade in Africa.
Huh. The day a bunch of dirty, bearded Islamist animals get the bulge on us is the day we deserve to fall.
To repeat, the subject is “Islamists”, not Islam. I hope this clarification has been helpful to you, and improves the chances that we will all together have a productive, meaningful discussion about these vital issues.
Have a nice day, you bug.
Why are Hindu India, Buddhist Thailand, Christian Nigeria and all the other targeted outposts of Islamist hate always left out of the us vs them arguments? Isn’t it Islamists against the non-Islamist world and not simply the west?
Mrs. Woods, you’re correct. I, along with many others, very frequently fail to remember the true scope of the threat. It’s useful to remember the quote, “Islam has bloody borders”. Did Samuel Huntingdon say that, or was it someone else?
I think the whole “Islamist” threat thing is way overstated. I know many Muslims, but don’t know any “Islamists”. Its true that moderate Muslims often dont speak out against the extremists, but (I think) that from their perspective to do so would be to give “aid and comfort” to ideas and ideals which they also oppose, an example being the US and her support for the zionist entity.
In much of the Arab world, corruption and cronyism rule the day. In the eyes of the so called moderates, the Islamic movements, while far from perfect, offer an alternative which is less corrupt and may offer a different road forward politically than that offered by the current crop of authoritarian secularist leaders so prevalent in the ME today. In short, political Islam offers a possible way out of the stagnation which currently grips the region.
Susan,
“Islam already has a long nihlistic tradition to draw from; whatever the Islamists imported from Europe already had a good foundation to build upon. ”
The nihilistic tradition of Islam that you point to is several centuries old, and I’m not sure if it’s relevant to what happens today. If you go back several centuries you’ll find some pretty awful traditions in the Christian countries too.
The link to modern European Left (Mrxists) isn’t about an ancient tradition, but something contemporary that the current terrorists absorbed in person, it’s part of their biography. It’s part of what they actually say. I’m not sure, on the other hand, that they have good knowledge and deep understanding of ancient Islamic traditions, to be influenced by them. Osama and co. weren’t educated in religious schools, they were educated in Western universities, they did not study ancient Islam.
MusselsfromBrussels writes: “I know many Muslims, but don’t know any “Islamists”.”
Oh, well, that’s all right then. Because you don’t personally happen to know any of these homi/suicidal maniacs, we can all sleep safely in our beds.
I sometimes wonder whether it is Moslem lunatics who are the greater threat, or the complacent ‘Useful Idiots’ who play down their threat that we should really fear.
Overstated the “Islamist” threat? (I prefer the term jihadist myself, but that is a minor quibble) Um.. Mussles, there are still two craters in downtown Manhatten.
When you make statements like that, its real hard to take you seriously.
I don’t doubt there are plenty of Muslims who are just as, if not mor appalled by the acts of the fanatics as the rest of us. But there is a big difference. The moderates have to live there, and considering how these jihadis treat most other Muslims, its hard to argue with a more cautious, quiet approach.
Islam will change. Not from outside, but from within. We in the West can do what we can to destroy the jihadis, but Muslims will have to take back their religion themselves. Right now, I doubt they see it as safe, or even do-able at this time.
Jacob, Islam does not belive in a continual progression of ideas and concepts, which we roughly call “changing times” in Western society. They believe in an eternal, fixed “truth” that is as valid for today’s times as it was for the 7th Century.
The unchangingness of Islam is one of their central tenants. In the Sunni branch, all schools of Islamic law were “frozen” in the 10th Century — no updates allowed.
The words of centuries-past scholars like Ibn Taymiyah are still quoted and studied today at Al-Azhar and other centers of Islamic learning.
To say that Bin Laden doesn’t know Classical Islam because he was educated in a Western University is absurd. He studied structural engineering in the West; he studied Islam in the Islamic world. One of his wives is a noted Islamic scholar. From his appearances in videotapes, knowledgeable observers have stated how closely Bin Laden follows the myriad personal requirements of the sharia — for instance wearing his watch on his right wrist rather than the left, the “bad” hand, etc., according to the hadith.
Today’s Islamists may have picked up a lot of ideas from the nihlists and utopianists of 20th century totalitarianism, but they had plenty to build on from the sharia to begin with.
PS – Aside from Syed Qutab, the other influential Islamist thinker was A. A. Mawdudi, a Pakistani who wrote most of his influential works in the 40s and 50s. Mawdudi’s works are widely, widely read in the Islamic world. It was Mawdudi who compared Islam – and not exactly in a derogatory sense — with both communism and fascism, BTW.
Thanks Susan. You know much more on the matter than I do, so your’e probably correct as far as I can say, and I learned some things.
Still, it’s worth noting, that a Western education did not weaken the medieval, Islamist component of Osama’s world view, but on the contrary – he found a strain in Western culture that only enhanced it.
And, Susan:
“One of his wives is a noted Islamic scholar.”
As far as I know, wives under Islam can’t be scholars, women don’t study.
Maybe you meant that one of his wives was a daughter of a noted Islamic scholar.
We will be betrayed to our deaths by the Western Left.
GCooper writes:
Well, I seem to sleep safely in my bed. I’m not too worried about getting taken out by some crazy jihadist. But if you want to worry about things like that, then go right ahead and do so. Whatever floats your boat…
I also think that ultraparanoiacs (like you) who really seem to want a war between the civilizations are probably at least as big a threat as the crazy jihadis.
Monty Python: Do you really think it likely that the Jihadists will have another success like they did on Sept 11? As for the rest of your post, I agree with you. I do think that Islam will change from within, and that eventually (probably sooner rather than later…) the whole religion thing will shrivel away as is happening in Europe and to a lesser extent in the USA. I think it is important to realize that Muslims & Arabs, and those who live in the Middle East have different problems in their lives, and as a result have different perceptions of what kind of “threat” the Islamists represent. If we truly plan to embrace democracy in the region, then we should be prepared to deal (at least in the short term) with some kind of political Islam.
Al Maviva writes:
Standing by the Jews is the good and right thing to do. Standing by Zionism and the state of Israel is not only morally wrong, but ultimately does a disservice to decent and honorable Jews, and will probably in the end hasten the reawakening of the kinds of hatreds last seen in the 1930’s.
Christianity and Judaism, along with Buddhism and other religions, are not allowed to prosper in the Arab/Muslim world.
It is madness for us to allow mass immigration from Islamic countries, and allowing them to preach their faith in the “West”, while they are allowed to prevent us from doing the same in their societies.
That stacks the odds firmly in their favour – their culture spreads while ours contracts.
MusselsfromBrussels, you wrote,
That’s because somebody else is doing the dreadful things which must be done. You and your kind are irresponsible.
Why on earth not? They prefer to pick on passive types like you. It’s safer that way.
We don’t want to, young man, we have to. The consequences of not worrying “about things like that” are too awful to contemplate. And once again, we seem to have drifted onto the subject of responsibility, and the abscence thereof.
And already you resort to a dried-up old dodge such as psychoanalyzing your opponent for the purpose of getting in a cheap insult. Couldn’t you keep your argument going longer than that?
What was wrong with the system we had, the one where we payed Arabs wealth beyond their wildest dreams for oil which they didn’t know was there until we told them, which they had no clue as to its’ use, and which they couldn’t extract even if they did know.
If we really wanted a “war between the civilisations”, Arabic would be well on the way to being a dead language. It is they who want war, not we. We’ve been damn good sports, considering that we have put up with a couple of decades of terrorist attacks without acting to defend our interests. Those days are over.
What are you implying? That you are in imminent danger of having peaceful civilians murdered as they go about their own business? Did you have something else in mind? Or are you just unserious, and talking out of your arse?
Bali. Madrid.
We can do that. But the instant “political Islam” picks up so much as a rock from the side of the road, we’ll give it a 2000 pound JDAM to hold. “Political Islam” had better mind its’ g-ddamn manners.
We’ve had a close look at Europe “standing by the Jews.” I wouldn’t rely on that as a sales technique, if I were you.
The State of Israel ended up being created because of a moral wrong, which occured in your neck of the woods. Some folk ought to have more sense than to bring up some subjects.
Jewish citizens of European countries are, in our times, being terrorized by other citizens of those same countries, as well as enemy aliens. What are European governments doing to serve those citizens of theirs who are being terrorized?
Gee, do you think so? It’s already happening, the least you can do is be honest about it. I can promise you one thing, after living with the results of European statesmanship over the past century, the last thing we are going to do in any way, shape, or form, is take our cue from Europeans.
I’m done. What an awful lot of bother I’ve gone to. Belgium is dying, Europe is dying. Your countries are going to be controlled by Muslims in half a century, and the Europeans will be well on the way to dying out in 100 years.
Good night, MusselsfromBrussels, enjoy your dhimmitude. I doubt that you will, but I hope for the best for you.
MusslesfromBrussels writes:
“Well, I seem to sleep safely in my bed. I’m not too worried about getting taken out by some crazy jihadist. But if you want to worry about things like that, then go right ahead and do so.”
I’m quite sure the poor bastards going to work in the Twin Towers on 11th September felt equally as unconcerned.
You can be as lackadasical as you like, fortunately, the grown-ups will do the worrying.
“I also think that ultraparanoiacs (like you) who really seem to want a war between the civilizations are probably at least as big a threat as the crazy jihadis.”
Yes. Remind me to fly my laptop through your office window one Autumn morning.
Jacob:
Women can’t lead prayers and can’t be Imams, but they can be Islamic teachers.