HIS many years in the pulpit have fine-tuned Professor Reverend Ronald Nicolson’s sonorous voice and it was a real treat to listen to him when he was the guest speaker at the July Tuesday Rostrum lunch.
It was also the content of his talk, ‘Radical Islam and the Rise of the Islamic State’, coupled with the wisdom, balance and objectivity that he brought to this controversial subject, that made Rev Nicolson, an Anglican minister and former University of KwaZulu-Natal Dean of the Faculty of Human and Management Sciences, one of best speakers the ‘thinking women’s club’ has ever hosted.
He stressed the fact that he was an interested lay person rather than an expert on his subject and throughout his talk and the rigorous question and answer session at its conclusion, he demonstrated an openness to other people’s ideas and opinions.
He also gave his listeners a profound idea to take home with them. When it came to religion, revelation had to be combined with God-given reason to be effective. As concerned as we were about the rise of Muslim radicalism, we should allow time and patience for this reason to prevail.
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He pointed out that Islam was some 600 years younger than Christianity and that Christianity was much less stable and more violent 600 years ago.
Rev Nicolson’s talk was absolutely fascinating in that it knitted together the snippets of information, history and news about Muslim radicals, the Islamic State and the Middle East that, in isolation, tend to give us such a puzzling picture of these extremely complex issues.
He assured his listeners that most Muslims were peace-loving people who, like most families worldwide, just wanted to get on with their lives.
While Muslim radicalism had been blamed for many terrorist attacks on Westerners in recent years, by far the most violence had been between different Muslim groups. An overwhelming majority of the violence had been a result of inter-Muslim conflict and had occurred in predominantly Muslim countries, he said.
While much had been written about violence perpetrated by the radical Islamic State organisation and although the Islamic State was quick to claim credit, most of the attacks on Westerners had been the work of ‘lone wolves’, usually disaffected young people, perhaps with psychotic tendencies nourished by poverty, marginalisation, prejudice and other social ills.
Rev Nicolson stressed the fact there were many different Muslim fundamental groups with different ideologies that often brought them into conflict. By explaining a little about the history of Islam he set the scene for a greater understanding of the factors he believed contributed to Muslim radicalism. Rev Nicolson explained that Islam was founded by the Prophet Muhammad who believed the Qur’an was dictated to him by the Angel Gabriel.
He described how over the next 120 years the new religion had spread rapidly, the Muslim-ruled Ottoman Empire or Caliphate eventually including most of the Middle East, parts of India and Africa and a substantial portion of Europe. As far as Muslims were concerned, this rapid expansion had been a logical development as they had believed God intended their religion to encompass the whole world. The apex of this mighty empire had been during the 16th Century under Suleiman the Magnificent, he said.
Discussing the dissolution of this empire and the modern-day development of the Islamic State, Rev Nicolson said this radical movement was striving to recreate the Caliphate. The Islamic State was often referred to in the media as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS and was a complex, many-stranded movement.
Many Muslims believed the worldwide spread of Islam had not occurred because God was angry with them and that a much stricter compliance with Sharia or Islamic law – and therefore a more radical approach to their religion – was required. This was one of a number of factors he believed were behind the increase in modern-day radical Islam.
He explained how colonialism and the carving up of parts of the former Ottoman Empire to share between France and England after WWI, western meddling, the desire for independence for Muslim territories in a number of non-Muslim countries and competition for power and resources, were all fuelling Islamic radicalism.
“Borders were drawn without consideration of ethnic, geographic or religious boundaries,” he said.
His listeners were particularly interested when Rev Nicolson spoke at length about the ancient split between the Sunni and Shia traditions and how this was one of the reasons for inter-Muslim conflict. Most interesting however, were his sensitive and sympathetic observations regarding conflict at the interface between the traditional Muslim world, values and traditions and our secular, global, capitalistically-inclined society.
At the end of his talk, there were many questions for Rev Nicolson who answered them with the tact, humanity, objectivity and the deep understanding of his subject that had marked his fascinating and enlightening talk. His listeners were left with an awareness of the complexity of many-stranded, modern-day Islam and a better understanding of both mainstream and the more radical Muslim movements.
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