Published Saturday, May 1, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News

Provocative moderate: A conversation with Shaykh Hisham Kabbani

Islamic leader discusses how he became embroiled in controversy while seeking to warn Muslims against `hidden agendas'

BY RICHARD SCHEININ
Mercury News Religion and Ethics Writer

SHAYKH Hisham Kabbani is shunned by many fellow Muslims. He knows it, anguishes over it, shrugs it off. He is the spiritual leader of a mosque in Mountain View -- and of the Washington, D.C.-based Islamic Supreme Council of America. Raised in Lebanon, Kabbani has lived in the United States since 1991 -- mostly in Los Altos Hills -- but only recently has become a figure of national controversy.

His newfound fame is the result of allegations he made in January at a State Department forum that 80 percent of the nation's approximately 3,000 mosques are controlled by ideological extremists. He said that extremist ideology had ``spread to 80 percent of the Muslim population'' in the United States but was rejected by the majority. These statements have made Kabbani an outcast and brought about his condemnation by eight national Muslim organizations that accuse him of casting a shadow upon millions of good people.

The bitter disagreement might be chalked up to warring personalities -- competing forces in an emerging American Muslim community -- if it weren't taking place against an alarming backdrop. Since last summer's bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the FBI has ratcheted up investigations of American Muslims and Muslim organizations suspected of complicity in international terrorism.

To vast numbers of Muslims -- professionals, family people -- it feels like a witch hunt. Anti-terrorist legislation passed by Congress in 1996 allows the federal government wide latitude in its investigations; secret evidence has been used to detain suspects. Investigations are being conducted in numerous cities, including New York, Chicago and Tampa.

This month, the FBI began to probe whether an associate of the terrorist Osama bin Laden had lectured to a Muslim audience in Santa Clara County within the past decade and -- perhaps under false pretenses -- raised money for his cause, according to a legal source.

That, Kabbani says, is why he went to the State Department: to warn innocent Muslims of potential prosecution for associating with terrorists, real or perceived. He wished, he says, to alert innocent Muslims to the ``hidden agendas'' of leaders who bring extremists into mosques to solicit money and who resist issuing condemnations of terrorism.

His critics wonder about his motives: He is a McCarthyesque finger-pointer, they claim, an opportunist, or an enigma. An affable interviewee, elegant in turban and heavy wool robe, Kabbani knows he is an unlikely candidate for demagogue. He is a Sufi, an exponent of Islam's spiritual dimension -- and Sufis generally focus on inner development. Kabbani publishes Muslim Magazine, which has 20,000 subscribers and occasionally explores the most contentious issues in the Muslim world. He says he wants American Muslims to remember the ``moderate'' form of Islam that the Prophet Muhammad prescribed 14 centuries ago. But critics say Kabbani, who has organized successful conferences for Islamic unity, is divisive at heart.

At times, Kabbani seems genuinely weary of the whole business. During interviews at the Mountain View mosque, he says he may quit talking about extremism and return to the humanitarian work of his centuries-old Naqshbandi Sufi order. He says he is sick and tired of controversy: ``May Allah forgive them,'' he says of his critics. ``And forgive me.''

Q: You seem to equate ``extremism'' with ``radicalism'' -- but not with terrorism? Is that right?

A: Most extremists are not violent. . . . Extremism in the Arabic language is a linguistic term that means deviating from the moderate line. You are driving on a road, a very narrow road: You have on the one side the valley, on the other side, the mountain. If you go on either side, you are in danger. You will either fall in the valley or hit the mountain.

Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said, ``We are a nation that always keeps to the moderate line.'' So if you go to this side or that side, we call it the extreme. You might not be violent. . . . But you go in a very radical ideology, and you build it up. You are indoctrinated in it . . . and you cannot go out of that shell.

So some followers of an extreme ideology might fall into violence.

Q: You've said some very harsh things about the American Muslim community. This is what people who don't like Muslims like to hear, isn't it? They like to hear that the mosques are led by extremists, that people are soliciting money for non-profit organizations that finance terrorist activities.

A: Might be . . . I don't know where they collect their money, where they send their money.

Q: It's been argued that your words bring the whole Muslim community under unjust suspicion.

A: It is better to stand up . . . and say, ``There is something wrong here. Let us investigate it.''

They are accusing me, as if I am helping the non-Muslim community to think badly about the Muslims. But the leaders of the Muslims are not doing anything to tell their own people what their agendas are. I asked them, ``Why don't you stand up and denounce terrorism?'' Why don't you say, ``We do not support the organizations that have been defined internationally as terrorist organizations. We denounce them.''

Then the Muslims are safe. They refuse. No one is doing that. That's why the Muslim community doesn't know whom to support, so they are giving (their money) to everyone . . .

But I have decided that it's worthless to speak, because people don't want to listen. So let them find their own destiny and face their own problems.

Q: You mean you are not going to talk about this anymore?

A: This is what I have decided. . . . Better I keep quiet and do my own work, write books, help on humanitarian projects. And when something happens, I will say that ``you did not listen.'' . . .

They accuse me of helping the non-Muslim. How am I helping the non-Muslim? I went to the State Department . . . where I found out that all this information was (already) very well known. The majority of the Muslim community is being watched. . . . At least now the Muslims will open their eyes. Many Muslims sent letters (to me): ``Thank you, thank you.''

Q: But other Muslims say, ``We're just turning the corner as a community. After all these years, we're gaining some acceptance on the American scene. We work hard, raise our families, and now this.''

A: No, that's not correct! In Washington, when I went to promote the conference, the congressmen said, ``We are happy to help you and work with the Muslim community. What do you need from us?''

Q: Some U.S. congressmen and senators are critical of the anti-terrorism legislation. They say it's being used, in some cases, to detain innocent Muslims. They say it's too widely drawn, that people are being detained for associations with organizations that were not illegal until three years ago.

A: The government has to present the documents that they have against these people whom they have detained. . . . And if there is something, they detain them, and if there is nothing, they release them.

The investigation that is going nowadays with several Muslim organizations might end up in a big problem for the whole Muslim community. That's why I stood up and said, ``Please, explain to us what's going on.''

Q: Can you give me an example of how charity, known as zakat, is collected in mosques and sent to the wrong places?

A: I don't know. What I know is they collect money. And they might be spending it here on activities to promote Islam, or they may be laundering it outside. But it is not my duty to find it. It is the duty of the government.

Q: You've said that an associate of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, spoke in Santa Clara a few years ago. You were told he was collecting money?

A: I read it in the . . . Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat. It is not something hidden. Here it is: Al-Hayat, 11 February.

Kabbani picks up a copy of the newspaper, which is published in London, and translates from the Arabic: They mention about collecting (money) around the nation. . . . But the money that was collected . . . in Santa Clara was not huge. . . .

Q: It wasn't much? . . . Do you ever fear that as you talk about these matters, your intentions may be good, but what you're doing may be used to hurt innocent people?

A: You think that the officials and government offices are going to listen to me? They have their own evidence. What I did was to make the Muslim community aware. It's not to give evidence to the FBI or to the CIA or to the federal government. No! It's to say, ``You Muslims, open your minds. Where are you going? What are you doing? You are jeopardizing the whole Muslim community life.''

These big national organizations, they have a certain agenda.

Q: But I see them fighting discrimination against Muslims in the workplace, criticizing films that depict Muslims unkindly, that sort of thing. They oppose the economic sanctions against Iraq.

A: Everybody opposes the sanctions.

Q: Do you?

A: Of course. Why have sanctions against these innocent Muslims there? These are victims of the leadership of Saddam Hussein. And there is no strong power to throw the leadership out. It means you are making the poor poorer and making Saddam Hussein stronger.

Q: You've been criticized for ``naming names'' to the government about a perceived threat.

A: I said ``organizations'' and I said ``many mosques.'' I didn't name mosques. I didn't name anyone (to the State Department).

Q: I know you've received anonymous death threats. I've seen e-mails from your critics who say -- again, anonymously -- that your group sends viruses to them, forges e-mails, and that threats come from your side as well.

A: You believe that? They slandered me without knowing me. For nine years before that conference and the State Department forum, I'm working (quietly), hidden. I was working on promoting spirituality and traditional and mainstream Islam.

Q: Is this a distraction for you? As a Naqshbandi, do you go into periods of seclusion?

A: Yeah. I make seclusion for 40 days, complete seclusion about once or twice a year. When I was younger, I used to do it for six or nine months at a stretch. That's training your spiritual power and your energy.

Q: So this controversy must be very . . .

A: Heavy on me. It's taking a lot of my energy, and it's a waste of time. Always we know that politics is dirty. Politics is always something that you try to avoid in the spiritual path. And that's why I am not happy. But I stepped out because there is a danger.

Why use the mosques for fiery speeches? For what reason? All these immigrants came here for what? To live in peace, or not? Why bring their problems here?

Q: Most Muslims do live in peace.

A: You are right. Not everyone is coming here because they have problems in their country. But some bring the problem, and then it affects the peaceful people.

Q: I've heard people say that you're very involved with promoting unity but that your words cause disunity.

A: It is not true. When I say ``unity,'' it is unity. In the two conferences we made in 1996 and 1998, we brought everyone on the podium. If you saw the C-SPAN, you saw the opening. Everybody spoke. What, this is not unity?

But they accuse me. They don't like me. They hate me because they were happy on their thrones. Someone came to bring their mistakes up.

Islam was brought to this country by activists. These activists had been already exposed to many Islamic political problems in the Middle East. They were affected by this ideology before they came to America.

Yes, there are . . . many small groups in this country who know mainstream Islam. But they don't have a voice because they don't have a national organization. When we begin to make a national organization with conferences and a magazine -- oh, here began the big screaming.

Q: Why do you call your group the Islamic Supreme Council? It sounds as if you're saying you're the top dog.

A: Everyone chooses his own name! (The national organization known as) CAIR is the Council on American Islamic Relations; so why are they speaking about the Middle East and Iraq? I have to defend myself!

I chose for myself a name. Is there not freedom of speech in America? Islamic Supreme Council: Why are they objecting to it?

Q: It makes it sound as if you're the supreme Islamic council in the country.

A: Let them have the ``Islamic Supreme Supreme Council of America''!

Q: Of all the work you do, what is most important?

A: To close up this mess. To close up this crazy stuff that they have brought. It is their mess. It is their presentation of Islam that makes me speak.

From my side, I want to be as before, to be writing, an author, giving lectures on spirituality. But wherever I see something that is dangerous for the Muslim community, I am going to stand up and say it. And they can dream that I will give a retraction of what I said. They have to give a retraction. They have to apologize.

Q: But can there be reconciliation with other Muslim groups?

A: All these national organizations, they like to see me falling. But what I like for the regular Muslims is not to believe me and not to believe these organizations. Let them go and educate and learn by themselves.

Of course, I'd like to see Muslims come together, leaders come together, and reconciliation. There's no problem. But not (at the price of) my dignity and the dignity of the Naqshbandis and mainstream Islam. No. If they want that, it's never going to happen. The Islamic constitution guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of religion. For everyone. We have to keep that.

Q: You've done all sorts of work, quietly. You've counseled gang members, lectured on Islamic healing arts. But critics say you are attacking the national organizations to bring them under suspicion and increase your own profile. You're not in it for the power?

A: (He sounds weary.) They say what they want to say. I am not interested in power. If I wanted power, I have power in my old country. Why do I want power here? For what reason? All my uncles are in power (in Lebanon). All my brothers, our relatives, are in power. We do not care. We want to live a simple life and let people live in happiness and peace. The Naqshbandi order likes to see everyone living peacefully regardless of their religions or their backgrounds, to be together as one universal human being community. This is our message.

They come against me, they target me easy, I target them. Because their homes are made of glass. They are easy targets, because I am more on the moderate line and they know me. All our statements, press releases were very well done, to keep moderation. Their statements were always antagonistic.

Q: You called them a ``lynch mob.''

A: OK, strong words. We never try to criticize. Because if you want to build a relationship with someone, don't criticize. His ego becomes bigger; your ego becomes bigger.

Like the CAIR chairman who said I am a monster. I am a monster to them. You tell me, am I a monster?

May Allah forgive them. And forgive me.