March 1992, Page 36

Personality

Sheikh Ahmad Kaftaro: Grand Mufti of Damascus

By Ian Williams

Sheikh Ahmad Kaftaro occasionally sounds like a reforming Episcopalian archbishop. As the Grand Mufti of Damascus, and head of the Supreme Islamic Council of Syria for the last two decades, he is determined to refute the Western stereotype of "Islamic fundamentalism." From a Kurdish family long established in Damascus, he had worked his way from being an imam to head of one of the Islamic law faculties before being elected to the highest office of the Sunnis, who make up about 80 percent of Syria's population.

A supporter of family planning, and an environmentalist, his ecumenical approach is designed to build, not burn, bridges with other believers. A hint of the more balanced approach is the relatively restrained volume of the calls to prayer emanating from the minarets in Damascus, where non-Muslims can sleep through the dawn call with little difficulty.

Although his headgear, robe and beard give the septuagenarian mufti a superficial resemblance to the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the twinkle in his eyes as well as his conversation distinguishes him from the stern apocalyptic icons of Shi'i Iran. Over lunch at his office, he proudly points out that his Islamic law faculty trains women to become prayer leaders, daiyats. They can, admittedly, only tend the spiritual needs of women, but that is more than some Christian churches have yet managed. "Female graduates can call for the way of Allah, and they can teach Arabic and religion in schools," he explains.

When women were first admitted to the courses more than 20 years ago, religious conservatives opposed it, even though men and women are separated during the lectures. The mufti comments indulgently that, "It is natural that innovations meet opposition."

When asked about the percentage of Syria's population that is Christian, he responds with yet another smile that Syria is a 100-percent Christian country:

"I am a Christian," he explains. "There is no difference. The verses of the Qur'an proclaim that. Every Muslim must first believe in the mission of Jesus Christ and his glory-so I am a Christian first of all."

He adds, in an expansively ecumenical way, "I read the Bible all the time, and the Pope told me he reads the Qur'an every day.

"When I met the Pope, I asked him 'Who created atheism and communism?' I told him 'You, yourself, and me, too. We men of religion when we accept religion in impractical ways, opposing humanity's interest, so the mind expels it, like a foreign body. We need to make a surgical operation to make religion suit the modern age.' Both religions need a new revolution to purify their philosophy from foreign elements."

In addition to the Qur'an itself, he cites other ancient precedents for his tolerance. For the first century after the Arabs took Damascus, Christians and Muslims shared the former Roman Temple on the site of the present great Ummayid Mosque. It was only when the numbers of Muslims grew, the mufti explains, that the caliph bought out the Christian half.

As if to counter historical intolerance, the mufti relates that he was once asked by a rabbi whether Christians and Jews could enter the Muslim paradise. Of course they could, he replied. "But the Jew who oppresses and forgets justice, and the Christian who does not follow the precepts of Christ, will join Muslim sinners in Hell." And, he adds, how Jews treat the Palestinians is a measure of whether they adhere sincerely to their own faith.

"There May Be Prophets We Do Not Know About"

Indeed his ecumenism goes further that the faiths of the peoples of the book, "There may be prophets we do not know about," he said. He suggests a holy role for Buddha, noting that "philosophers and social reformers in all ages and societies have been a sort of evolution to better circumstances."

The mufti is a vigorous proponent of family planning, citing the Prophet Muhammad, who stressed that a husband must get the approval of the wife for children. "No man conquers his wife," he points out.

He is also an active environmentalist, referring the image of "Spaceship Earth" to a saying of the Prophet Muhammad's about a ship where, in order to preserve the ship for everyone, the passengers below decks had to be restrained from making a hole to get water. "Those who make holes in our planetary ship will cause damage to all those who dwell on it," the mufti warns.

Perhaps the worst thing to happen in the past 10 years to the image of Islam in the West was the Ayatollah Khomeini's death sentence against writer Salman Rushdie. The Grand Mufti unhesitatingly explains why he is in no way a Rushdie supporter: "Salman Rushdie really told lies and false things. He spoke in a society that does not know the Prophet Muhammad, and his book was an aggression against Muslims. I issued a call upon him, in my official capacity, for a dialogue about what he had written."

But does Sheikh Ahmad Kaftaro personally approve of the death sentence? "Of course not!" he exclaims. He explains that all of the different schools of Islamic law prescribe various periods of remonstration and debate to bring an apostate back to Islam before a death sentence can be considered. One calls for three days' debate, another for a month, and another for an open-ended discussion-and the apostate should not be killed. "That's the one I subscribe to," the Grand Mufti says with a broad smile. His interpreter, with the sly smile of a curate, adds, "But, in any case, the Grand Mufti would convince him in less than three days."

Ian Williams is a British journalist based at the United Nations.

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