I have written about Robert Azzi before, but because he is as busy as ever with his “Ask A Muslim Anything” events, it’s time for another look at this tireless propagandist for Islam. For several years, Azzi has been visiting towns in New Hampshire — and very occasionally in northern Massachusetts — from his home in Exeter, N.H., offering the chance for innocent Infidels to learn, by asking him, all about Islam. As it turns out, they don’t learn much.
Azzi was born in this country of Lebanese Christian parents, became a photographer who concentrated on photojournalism in the Middle East, traveling to Lebanon, Egypt, and especially to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he made friends and valuable contacts. At some point he became dissatisfied with Christianity, and engaged in his spiritual search, Azzi apparently found Islam much to his liking, as he saw it practiced in the Middle East — including in Saudi Arabia — and so much more spiritually fulfilling than the Christian faith that his own ancestors had steadfastly managed to hold onto, over the centuries, in Lebanon. With his Christian Lebanese background, one might have thought that Robert Azzi, if only out of filial piety, would have continued to practice the Christianity that his ancestors had never abandoned despite the difficult conditions in which dhimmis often lived. Lebanon was an exception, in that the sheer number of Christians — mostly Maronites, but with some Roman Catholics and Orthodox — made the country a much safer place for Christians than was the rest of the Middle East. Christians in Lebanon were able to create their own secure enclaves, generally safe from Muslim depredations.
In a spirit of ostentatious openness, Azzi urges his audiences to ask anything about his, Robert Azzi’s, understanding of Islam, as he attempts to “clear up misconceptions and undo stereotypes.” He appears in meeting halls, libraries, schools, churches, wherever he can engage a space. Go ahead, he says, ask a Muslim — that is, ask me! — anything. “There are no stupid questions,” he says encouragingly. He explains that four years ago he began this program of educational outreach, prompted only by a desire to better inform his non-Muslim neighbors about Islam, to provide both answers and to encourage questions.
Not everyone thinks Robert Azzi is quite so innocent in his aims. Judging by the press reports of his appearances, the questions — far from being probing — are all about the most bland and unthreatening aspects of Islam. He presents a sanitized Islam, tolerant, peaceful, in which Azzi manages to skirt, or ignore altogether, those aspects of the faith that are most troubling for non-Muslims and that they most need to understand.
In a recent event, Azzi was asked about why Islam was divided into different sects or denominations.
In simplest terms, Azzi said the Muslim population is about 85 percent Sunni, and 15 percent Shia. Shia is a contraction meaning, “followers of Ali,” a family member of Islam’s first prophet and messenger, Mohammed.
“At the time of the death of the prophet Mohammed, there was no clear succession…so, the argument was, should it go to the most learned and respected, or someone related to the prophet, by marriage, and by blood” Azzi said.
“The split began when the majority of Muslims looked to a succession of Caliphs. However, the followers of Ali, also called Shi’ites, rejected the first three Caliphs, accepting Ali, who came after them, as the true spiritual heir of Mohammed.”
“There was a period of fighting, and the schism [sic] between the Sunni and Shi’i became, forever, sort of shattered,” Azzi said. “It wasn’t a conflict that was military, in the way, say, the Protestant Reformation was…it had to do more with authority in Islam.”
Azzi confuses. What does he mean by claiming that the “schism” (i.e. the split or fissure between Sunni and Shia) became “sort of shattered”? Does he think that “schism” means its opposite — “unity”? And is it accurate to say Sunni-Shia split wasn’t a “military” conflict? Has Azzi forgotten the battle of Karbala in 680? Or any of the battles that Sunnis fought with Shi’a, right up to the present-day battles in Yemen, Iraq, Syria? Or does he want his audience not to learn about that violent intra-Islamic history, because it puts Islam in a bad light?
Azzi continued:
As with other major religions, there are variations within both major branches of Islam, with differences of belief in lifestyle, adherence to rules such as the ban on pork or alcohol, attendance at religious gatherings and houses of worship, and more.
There is no difference, between Sunni and Shi’a, on the duty to wage Jihad against the Infidel. Both Sunnis and Shi’a read the same 109 Qur’anic verses that command violent Jihad against the Infidels; both Sunnis and Shi’a read the same two hadith in which Muhammad says “War is deceit” and “I have been made victorious through terror.”
An audience member asked about Azzi’s decision to convert to Islam.
Azzi said in the 1960s he had been “mostly indifferent to religion at that time.” Azzi said he traveled to Lebanon, where he found a world of spiritual traditions, including Catholics, Protestants, Sunni, Shi’ites, and Zoroastrians — practitioners of a monotheistic religion with origins in Persia.
“There are 17 different, recognized religious sects in Lebanon,” Azzi said. “I traveled a lot. I met some Saudis.”
The implication is that Lebanon was and is, a tolerant place, with “17 different sects.” Azzi does not mention Jews as one of those sects, for the Jews all had to flee Lebanon in 1948. Nor does he allude to the civil war, less than a decade later, between Muslims and Christians, that wracked Lebanon for years. Nor is there any mention of the jockeying for power between Sunnis and the Shi’a, who have managed to build their militia, the terrorist Hezbollah, into the most powerful military force in Lebanon.
Then there is that cryptic final note: “I met some Saudis.” And? Did they offer Azzi friendship, and possibly something beside, such as well-paid gigs as a photographer in the Kingdom, which might require him to become a Muslim if, for example, he was asked to take photographs in Mecca and Medina? He doesn’t explain that tell-tale allusion to “Saudis.”