AlJumuah [The Friday Report], vol III, no. 10.
Secularism is defined in the Webster dictionary as: "A system of doctrines and practices that rejects any form of religious faith and worship" or "The belief that religion and ecclesiastical affairs should not enter into the function of the state especially into public education."
There is no doubt that secularism contradicts Islam in every aspect. They are two different paths that never meet; choosing one means rejecting the other. Hence, whoever chooses Islam has to reject secularism. In the following, we go in the details of explaining why.
1- First, secularism makes lawful what Allah has made unlawful.
The Rule of Allah (Shari`ah) is compulsory and has basic laws and regulations that cannot be changed. Some of these laws are concerned with the acts of worship, the relations between men and women, etc.
What is the position with regard to these laws?
Secularism makes adultery lawful if the male and the female are consenting adults.
As for Riba (interest on money), it is the basis of all financial transactions in secular economies. On the contrary, Allah says (s.2 A. 278): "O you who believe, fear Allah and leave what comes from Riba if you are believers. If you do not do so, then wait for a war from Allah and His Messenger."
As for alcohol, all secular systems allow the consumption of alcohol and make selling it a lawful business.
2- Second, secularism is clear unbelief (Kufr).
Secularism is based on separating religion from all the affairs of this life and hence, it rules by law and regulations other than Allah's laws. Hence, secularism rejects Allah's rules with no exception and prefers regulations other than Allah's and His Messenger's. In fact, many secularists claim that Allah's laws might have been suitable for the time they were revealed but are now outdated.
As a result, most of the laws governing the daily affairs of life in the countries ruled by secular systems contradict Islam. Allah says (S.5 A.50): "Do they seek a judgment of Ignorance? But, who, for a people whose faith is assured, can give better judgment than Allah?"
Ibn Katheer said in the Tafseer of this verse that Allah is denouncing those who reject His ruling and accept other rulings that are not based on the Shari`ah of Allah. Whoever does so is indeed a non-believer. Indeed, belief in Allah can never go with the acceptance of other than His rulings in one's heart. Allah says (S.5 A.44): "If any do fail to judge by what Allah has revealed, they are non-believers."
From the above, the status of secularism and its relation to Islam are clear. But the ignorance about the Islamic truth is still dominating the Muslim's mind. Most secular systems repeat slogans like "no religion in politics and no politics in religion" or "religion is for Allah, and the state is for the people." Such sayings portray their view of Islam as a religion to be practiced in the mosque only, and that it should not be allowed to rule life outside the mosque. Furthermore, they try to deceive people with democratic slogans like "personal freedom" and "people governing people." That means that people come first and no place is made for the ruling of Allah.
This is why secularism is clear Kufr, this is why secular systems have no legality and authority and should be rejected by Muslims.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Modernism in Islam
Based on "Modernism in Islam" lecture series by Jamaal al-Din Zarabozo
WHAT IS MODERNISM AND WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
We can relate, ideologically, the modernist movement spreading these days to one sect in the past. This sect is called the Muta'zila, which is dated back to the third Islamic century. Although those people accepted the Qur'an and Sunna they made ta'weel (their own interpretation of the Qur'an) and said 'aql (intelligence) takes precedence over naql (guidance of the Prophet). However, this school died out. The modernist movement did not evolve from them, but they are very similar to them. The modernist movement actually originated in Europe (middle-ages). At the time when the scientific method came about in Spain, it was seen that what the church was teaching was not true. This led to a slow revolt.
The basic view of modernism (in all religions) is that: the religion should change according to the circumstances, and that it is not fixed. There is no such thing as absolute truth. The Jewish and Christian modernist responce in Europe tried to explain how the religion was still relevant for the people. They made innovations to keep people interested in the religion (such as singing in church, introduced only in the 1900's). They tried to say the divine and the human is mixed in the Bible and that the parts that are true must be the ones that are not out of date. Also, the religion is improving over time and there is no absolute truth in the Bible.
This is the time in history when many Muslims were looking to Europe. This led to three choices for those Muslims: accept the West; reject the West; or mix the two (reform Islam). Those who followed the third (the modernist) developed in, and focused on: Turkey - because it was under British influence; and Egypt - because Al-Azhar was the seat of Islamic knowledge.
The people of this modernist movement judge Islam according to their 'aql. Some of their faults in regards to it are:
1) use it for things which it can't comprehend;
2) refer everything to it: accept what agrees with it, reject what does not;
3) judge the revelation by it. However, Ahl As-Sunna Wal Jamaa' believes that using the sound 'aql should lead one to the conclusion that the Qur'an and the Prophet are true and that their teachings should take precedence over pure 'aql.
THE INFLUENCE OF MODERNISM IN AMERICA
Modernist are saying that the West and the world has changed, and that Islam must become "civilized". Modernism has spread the most in the U.S. because:
1) there are no scholars available to refute them, or they won't refute them because people don't want to criticize them;
2) it allows Muslims from overseas to become part of American society and they do not have to be recognized as Muslim. Also, new American Muslims will not have to change their old lifestyle;
3) much of the literature, scholars, and institutions in the U.S. reflect the modernist thinking.
In tafseer, Yusuf Ali is the most popular translator of the meaning of the Qur'an, even though he denies what the 'aql can't see (of the unseen). In seerah, one book is saying the Prophet is like anyone else. Another tries to say the sunna is not for the shariah and that sometimes we have to throw away the hadith because Allah did not correct the Prophet's mistakes when he made ijtihaad.
In Fiqh, modernists say interest is permissible, menstruation women can pray, and Muslim women can marry kaafir men. They say the face of women was not covered until 150 years after the time of the Prophet, even though it existed in his time, and that women should always pray in the mosque, even though hadith only show women in the mosque at Ishaa and Fajr because they could not be recognized in the dark. They also say the hadith that a people with a woman ruler will not succeed is not true today and polygamy is forbidden except under certain conditions (which do not exist). Finally, it should be mentioned that this movement is organized and has resources such as magazines, television, conventions, and literature.
SOME OF THEIR VIEWS
Modernists influence the thinking of people, and that person spreads their views on unknowingly. Their way of thinking is the most dangerous thing about them. None discuss aqeedah (belief) because it is not important to them ('aql judges naqal). They are also trying to remove the sunna and say that the system of the old muhadditheen is insufficient. Most say (as do critics of the Bible) that we need a "higher criticism" of hadith and the earlier conclusions (ijmaa) of scholars are not sufficient, yet they give no new way to judge hadith. However, we as Muslims understand that the Prophet was guided by Allah and that we may not be able to understand everything in the hadith with our 'aql.
It is common for the modernists to question the role of the sunna in the shariah. One said all of the sunna is of this world and not deen, even in the Prophet's time, therefore it is all a matter of shoora (consultation) and ijtihaad (therefore changeable). Another says we need to make ijtihaad for what is to be followed, and changes of time and place make sunna difficult to use. All of this is mentioned to weaken the view of the sunna. The Jews and Christians tried to differ the human from the divine. Modernists try to point out the differences between the Messenger as a human and as a Prophet. They also avoid following the sunna by dividing his life into parts (imam, judge, military leader, prophet, etc.), saying some are not divine teachings and not law. Some say everyone is free to make ijtihaad, and later restrictions on it were imposed by the people. Another said a ruling may change even if it is from the Qur'an and Sunna.
HOW DO MODERNISTS GO ASTRAY?
The observer can easily point out the following points as the driving force for this trend:
1) Their premises and assumptions are wrong. Modernists look to the West and try to reinterpret the "old religion" with modern science and modern times. They assume that:
a) the present situation is advanced or different (i.e. "this is not the Prophet's time!"). However, the idea of progress and that things are better now is Marxian and Hegelian. It is against the hadith, as the Prophet said each generation is getting worse. They must prove that there has been progression (no definition of it given). Islamically the advanced society is the one that comes closer to Allah, and understands and applies Islam better (such as the sahaaba). In fact, the current societies have the things of the old societies (such as homosexuality, etc.) as mentioned in the Qur'an;
b) religion is relative to time and place (i.e. "therefore we need to judge Islam in light of modern science"). Modernists are "people of science" and judge Islam according to modern science. They think that the West is based on science, but they fail to notice that not all science is based on fact. In reality, much of science is only hypothesis (not a fact). Also, every science has its own philosophy, which will lead to its own conclusions;
c) the way of thinking of a society is based on (is a product of) its enviroment. Modernists say most of religion is from the people and their environment and it can be judged by later times, and hadith are related to that time only. However, there is no proof for the modernist hypothesis that religious truth is relative. Allah says the Qur'an is Haq (truth). Modernists are saying (by inference) that if the Qur'an is not true now, then it was never true.
2) The methodology they use is wrong. The methodology of the modernists is the way they mislead people to the wrong conclusions. They claim to be scientific, but they are usually inconsistent or have no proof or foundation for their beliefs. Some of the means and principles they use include:
a) Sunna and Hadith. They claim the Qur'an is authentic and they only follow "authentic" hadith. This implies that they have a way to judge hadith (different from that of the traditional scholars), yet most give no new way to judge hadith, and are using their 'aql (intelligence) to determine this (like the female ruler hadith). Modernists especially dislike hadith which have specific meanings and prefer ones which only have general principles.
b) Use of weak hadith to help their points and arguments (while they are calling for the use of authentic hadith). For example, in the area of women in Islam (the two areas the modernists try to change the most are the sunna and women) they like to quote two stories from the time of Umar: 1) when Umar was giving a Khutbah he tried to restrict the amount of dowry, a woman opposed, and Umar corrected himself and thanked the woman, and 2) Umar appointed Umma Shifaa as a market-regulator (used by modernist to say women can work in the government). However, both of these stories are not authentic.
c) Use vague terms without defining them. Modernists use terms like democracy, freedom, and equality, but they do not define what they mean by them. The danger in using vague terms is that a knowledgeable person will pass over the word or concept, thinking they meant the Islamic or acceptable definition while in fact they did not, while others may believe what they are saying is true.
d) Do not present all of the relevant information that is available on the subject. That is, from Qur'an, sunna, etc. They only present that which will support their views. This tactic is used to avoid unliked beliefs, so they just do not mention them.
e) Force their interpretation onto the text. This is what the Muta'zilla did, when they said 'aql takes precedence over what is from the Prophet. Many modernists say Islam is the "rational" religion. This is true if you mean everything is from Allah and there is no contradiction, but to say that we can study everything in Islam by judging it with only our intellect is unacceptable and there is also no proof for this. To avoid implementing what the Qur'an and sunna says, the modernists say we need to follow the "spirit" of Islam and not worry about the laws specifically. But it is clear from the Qur'an and Sunna that we are to take both. They will argue that the text of the Qur'an only says for women to dress modestly and they do not like to talk about the specific details of hijaab and say we only need to follow the "spirit" of the law.
f) They tend to oppose scholars by saying they meant something else. They say that the door to ijtihaad is open, which is something accepted by the Ahl As-Sunna Wal Jamaa'. However, it is not open to everybody on any subject. Modernists claim that anyone would make ijtihaad until Imam Shaffie narrowed the qualifications (not true), and today anyone can do it. In one magazine, on the question of polygamy and divorce, some said that these two can be restricted by ijtihaad. They often misquote scholars and give their own meanings for what they said.
g) Often follow strange and rejected opinions. They try to revive some of the old opinions because they like it and say that this writer said it in the past. Modernists try to open the door to these opinions and choose what is the most suitable and easy to follow. However, we are supposed to look for the fiqh opinions that are the closest to the truth. They usually bring bad hadith such as "The differences in my Ummah is a mercy" or reject authentic hadith such as the one about the breakup of the Ummah into 73 sects.
h) Follow their desires. They often make rulings and fatawa without permissible daleel (evidence). One said music is permissible because he did not see something wrong with it, so it is halal. But he did not check what the Qur'an and the sunna say about this subject.
ISLAM AND MODERNISM
Ahl As-Sunna Wal Jamaa' believes that there is only one true Islam. This is proven in Qur'an and Hadith. One hadith shows the straight line as leading to Allah, and branching paths leading off it with a devil at each one calling to it. Also, the umma will break into 73 sects, and the true way is the one who follows Muhammad and his companions. Modernists are differing from Ahl As-Sunna Wal-Jamaa' in:
1) everything in accordance with Qur'an and Sunna is Haq (truth) and what disagrees with it is false (some modernists disagree with this). Also, statements consistent with the Qur'an and Sunna are accepted;
2) Ijmaa (consensus) of the sahaaba (and early generations) is a hujja (proof) for all Muslims. Modernists say sahaaba are men and we are men, and even matters agreed on by them are open to ijtihaad;
3) anything in the Qur'an and Sunna cannot be opposed by 'aql, rational thought, opinion, or qiysas. This is supported in the Qur'an and is not open to discussion or vote. One modernists said the cutting of the hand of the thief is a "Khomeni Islam" and is unethical;
4) there are constants in Islam related to belief, worship, etc. and these are good, sound, proper, and correct for all places and times. This view is accepted by the Ahl Sunna, but not by many of the modernists, saying that all truth is relative and there is no constants. However, these constant principles are basic aspects of the Ahl Sunna and are traced to the Qur'an and Sunna and Sahaaba. They are not questionable or changeable things. In many of these things, modernists say we need ijtihaad and tajdeed.
DANGERS
1) Many are influenced by it and do not know it. Also, their views are unacceptable and should be refuted.
2) Many people do not recognize it as a movement of munkar or bida' and do not evaluate its writings and speeches, so they try to defend it. Many of their writings are from rationalization (which has no end or conclusion), and the effects of this are seen in the Christian church (that is, they now have no relationship to their religion, and it has no practical value or purpose).
3) This group is also playing into the hands of the kuffar. They are happy with it because their effort is to bring the Muslim women out of the home to change them. The last 200 years has been a colonialist and orientalist attack on the position of the woman in Islam (to destroy her and the society).
CONCLUSIONS
1) The modernists movement as a whole (what it is based on) is from Bida' (innovation). They have their own principles and ways, which contradicts that of Ahl-Sunna. They say we want ijtihaad in the basic principles of the deen (religion) which are constant.
2) They are very willing to reject and contradict the ijmaa of the sahaaba on clear points (such as stoning of the adulterer and the apostate is to be killed) and hadith are dealt with as if they are not important (women ruler hadith is common).
3) One of the main points of modernism is to change the role of women. They say it is permissible to mix men and women and to not wear hijaab. The modernists are impressed by the West and their conclusions always seem to agree with the views of the West.
****
Most of the information used for this article is from a seven part cassette series which is available from: Dar Makkah: 2040 S. Oneida #2A. Denver, CO 80224. The speaker frequently pointed out that his purpose was to warn about the dangers and mistakes of this movement and not to defame individual Muslims. Also, his information came from their writings, speeches, and discussions with these individuals, and not from what he heard from other people.
Extracted from Islaam.com
WHAT IS MODERNISM AND WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
We can relate, ideologically, the modernist movement spreading these days to one sect in the past. This sect is called the Muta'zila, which is dated back to the third Islamic century. Although those people accepted the Qur'an and Sunna they made ta'weel (their own interpretation of the Qur'an) and said 'aql (intelligence) takes precedence over naql (guidance of the Prophet). However, this school died out. The modernist movement did not evolve from them, but they are very similar to them. The modernist movement actually originated in Europe (middle-ages). At the time when the scientific method came about in Spain, it was seen that what the church was teaching was not true. This led to a slow revolt.
The basic view of modernism (in all religions) is that: the religion should change according to the circumstances, and that it is not fixed. There is no such thing as absolute truth. The Jewish and Christian modernist responce in Europe tried to explain how the religion was still relevant for the people. They made innovations to keep people interested in the religion (such as singing in church, introduced only in the 1900's). They tried to say the divine and the human is mixed in the Bible and that the parts that are true must be the ones that are not out of date. Also, the religion is improving over time and there is no absolute truth in the Bible.
This is the time in history when many Muslims were looking to Europe. This led to three choices for those Muslims: accept the West; reject the West; or mix the two (reform Islam). Those who followed the third (the modernist) developed in, and focused on: Turkey - because it was under British influence; and Egypt - because Al-Azhar was the seat of Islamic knowledge.
The people of this modernist movement judge Islam according to their 'aql. Some of their faults in regards to it are:
1) use it for things which it can't comprehend;
2) refer everything to it: accept what agrees with it, reject what does not;
3) judge the revelation by it. However, Ahl As-Sunna Wal Jamaa' believes that using the sound 'aql should lead one to the conclusion that the Qur'an and the Prophet are true and that their teachings should take precedence over pure 'aql.
THE INFLUENCE OF MODERNISM IN AMERICA
Modernist are saying that the West and the world has changed, and that Islam must become "civilized". Modernism has spread the most in the U.S. because:
1) there are no scholars available to refute them, or they won't refute them because people don't want to criticize them;
2) it allows Muslims from overseas to become part of American society and they do not have to be recognized as Muslim. Also, new American Muslims will not have to change their old lifestyle;
3) much of the literature, scholars, and institutions in the U.S. reflect the modernist thinking.
In tafseer, Yusuf Ali is the most popular translator of the meaning of the Qur'an, even though he denies what the 'aql can't see (of the unseen). In seerah, one book is saying the Prophet is like anyone else. Another tries to say the sunna is not for the shariah and that sometimes we have to throw away the hadith because Allah did not correct the Prophet's mistakes when he made ijtihaad.
In Fiqh, modernists say interest is permissible, menstruation women can pray, and Muslim women can marry kaafir men. They say the face of women was not covered until 150 years after the time of the Prophet, even though it existed in his time, and that women should always pray in the mosque, even though hadith only show women in the mosque at Ishaa and Fajr because they could not be recognized in the dark. They also say the hadith that a people with a woman ruler will not succeed is not true today and polygamy is forbidden except under certain conditions (which do not exist). Finally, it should be mentioned that this movement is organized and has resources such as magazines, television, conventions, and literature.
SOME OF THEIR VIEWS
Modernists influence the thinking of people, and that person spreads their views on unknowingly. Their way of thinking is the most dangerous thing about them. None discuss aqeedah (belief) because it is not important to them ('aql judges naqal). They are also trying to remove the sunna and say that the system of the old muhadditheen is insufficient. Most say (as do critics of the Bible) that we need a "higher criticism" of hadith and the earlier conclusions (ijmaa) of scholars are not sufficient, yet they give no new way to judge hadith. However, we as Muslims understand that the Prophet was guided by Allah and that we may not be able to understand everything in the hadith with our 'aql.
It is common for the modernists to question the role of the sunna in the shariah. One said all of the sunna is of this world and not deen, even in the Prophet's time, therefore it is all a matter of shoora (consultation) and ijtihaad (therefore changeable). Another says we need to make ijtihaad for what is to be followed, and changes of time and place make sunna difficult to use. All of this is mentioned to weaken the view of the sunna. The Jews and Christians tried to differ the human from the divine. Modernists try to point out the differences between the Messenger as a human and as a Prophet. They also avoid following the sunna by dividing his life into parts (imam, judge, military leader, prophet, etc.), saying some are not divine teachings and not law. Some say everyone is free to make ijtihaad, and later restrictions on it were imposed by the people. Another said a ruling may change even if it is from the Qur'an and Sunna.
HOW DO MODERNISTS GO ASTRAY?
The observer can easily point out the following points as the driving force for this trend:
1) Their premises and assumptions are wrong. Modernists look to the West and try to reinterpret the "old religion" with modern science and modern times. They assume that:
a) the present situation is advanced or different (i.e. "this is not the Prophet's time!"). However, the idea of progress and that things are better now is Marxian and Hegelian. It is against the hadith, as the Prophet said each generation is getting worse. They must prove that there has been progression (no definition of it given). Islamically the advanced society is the one that comes closer to Allah, and understands and applies Islam better (such as the sahaaba). In fact, the current societies have the things of the old societies (such as homosexuality, etc.) as mentioned in the Qur'an;
b) religion is relative to time and place (i.e. "therefore we need to judge Islam in light of modern science"). Modernists are "people of science" and judge Islam according to modern science. They think that the West is based on science, but they fail to notice that not all science is based on fact. In reality, much of science is only hypothesis (not a fact). Also, every science has its own philosophy, which will lead to its own conclusions;
c) the way of thinking of a society is based on (is a product of) its enviroment. Modernists say most of religion is from the people and their environment and it can be judged by later times, and hadith are related to that time only. However, there is no proof for the modernist hypothesis that religious truth is relative. Allah says the Qur'an is Haq (truth). Modernists are saying (by inference) that if the Qur'an is not true now, then it was never true.
2) The methodology they use is wrong. The methodology of the modernists is the way they mislead people to the wrong conclusions. They claim to be scientific, but they are usually inconsistent or have no proof or foundation for their beliefs. Some of the means and principles they use include:
a) Sunna and Hadith. They claim the Qur'an is authentic and they only follow "authentic" hadith. This implies that they have a way to judge hadith (different from that of the traditional scholars), yet most give no new way to judge hadith, and are using their 'aql (intelligence) to determine this (like the female ruler hadith). Modernists especially dislike hadith which have specific meanings and prefer ones which only have general principles.
b) Use of weak hadith to help their points and arguments (while they are calling for the use of authentic hadith). For example, in the area of women in Islam (the two areas the modernists try to change the most are the sunna and women) they like to quote two stories from the time of Umar: 1) when Umar was giving a Khutbah he tried to restrict the amount of dowry, a woman opposed, and Umar corrected himself and thanked the woman, and 2) Umar appointed Umma Shifaa as a market-regulator (used by modernist to say women can work in the government). However, both of these stories are not authentic.
c) Use vague terms without defining them. Modernists use terms like democracy, freedom, and equality, but they do not define what they mean by them. The danger in using vague terms is that a knowledgeable person will pass over the word or concept, thinking they meant the Islamic or acceptable definition while in fact they did not, while others may believe what they are saying is true.
d) Do not present all of the relevant information that is available on the subject. That is, from Qur'an, sunna, etc. They only present that which will support their views. This tactic is used to avoid unliked beliefs, so they just do not mention them.
e) Force their interpretation onto the text. This is what the Muta'zilla did, when they said 'aql takes precedence over what is from the Prophet. Many modernists say Islam is the "rational" religion. This is true if you mean everything is from Allah and there is no contradiction, but to say that we can study everything in Islam by judging it with only our intellect is unacceptable and there is also no proof for this. To avoid implementing what the Qur'an and sunna says, the modernists say we need to follow the "spirit" of Islam and not worry about the laws specifically. But it is clear from the Qur'an and Sunna that we are to take both. They will argue that the text of the Qur'an only says for women to dress modestly and they do not like to talk about the specific details of hijaab and say we only need to follow the "spirit" of the law.
f) They tend to oppose scholars by saying they meant something else. They say that the door to ijtihaad is open, which is something accepted by the Ahl As-Sunna Wal Jamaa'. However, it is not open to everybody on any subject. Modernists claim that anyone would make ijtihaad until Imam Shaffie narrowed the qualifications (not true), and today anyone can do it. In one magazine, on the question of polygamy and divorce, some said that these two can be restricted by ijtihaad. They often misquote scholars and give their own meanings for what they said.
g) Often follow strange and rejected opinions. They try to revive some of the old opinions because they like it and say that this writer said it in the past. Modernists try to open the door to these opinions and choose what is the most suitable and easy to follow. However, we are supposed to look for the fiqh opinions that are the closest to the truth. They usually bring bad hadith such as "The differences in my Ummah is a mercy" or reject authentic hadith such as the one about the breakup of the Ummah into 73 sects.
h) Follow their desires. They often make rulings and fatawa without permissible daleel (evidence). One said music is permissible because he did not see something wrong with it, so it is halal. But he did not check what the Qur'an and the sunna say about this subject.
ISLAM AND MODERNISM
Ahl As-Sunna Wal Jamaa' believes that there is only one true Islam. This is proven in Qur'an and Hadith. One hadith shows the straight line as leading to Allah, and branching paths leading off it with a devil at each one calling to it. Also, the umma will break into 73 sects, and the true way is the one who follows Muhammad and his companions. Modernists are differing from Ahl As-Sunna Wal-Jamaa' in:
1) everything in accordance with Qur'an and Sunna is Haq (truth) and what disagrees with it is false (some modernists disagree with this). Also, statements consistent with the Qur'an and Sunna are accepted;
2) Ijmaa (consensus) of the sahaaba (and early generations) is a hujja (proof) for all Muslims. Modernists say sahaaba are men and we are men, and even matters agreed on by them are open to ijtihaad;
3) anything in the Qur'an and Sunna cannot be opposed by 'aql, rational thought, opinion, or qiysas. This is supported in the Qur'an and is not open to discussion or vote. One modernists said the cutting of the hand of the thief is a "Khomeni Islam" and is unethical;
4) there are constants in Islam related to belief, worship, etc. and these are good, sound, proper, and correct for all places and times. This view is accepted by the Ahl Sunna, but not by many of the modernists, saying that all truth is relative and there is no constants. However, these constant principles are basic aspects of the Ahl Sunna and are traced to the Qur'an and Sunna and Sahaaba. They are not questionable or changeable things. In many of these things, modernists say we need ijtihaad and tajdeed.
DANGERS
1) Many are influenced by it and do not know it. Also, their views are unacceptable and should be refuted.
2) Many people do not recognize it as a movement of munkar or bida' and do not evaluate its writings and speeches, so they try to defend it. Many of their writings are from rationalization (which has no end or conclusion), and the effects of this are seen in the Christian church (that is, they now have no relationship to their religion, and it has no practical value or purpose).
3) This group is also playing into the hands of the kuffar. They are happy with it because their effort is to bring the Muslim women out of the home to change them. The last 200 years has been a colonialist and orientalist attack on the position of the woman in Islam (to destroy her and the society).
CONCLUSIONS
1) The modernists movement as a whole (what it is based on) is from Bida' (innovation). They have their own principles and ways, which contradicts that of Ahl-Sunna. They say we want ijtihaad in the basic principles of the deen (religion) which are constant.
2) They are very willing to reject and contradict the ijmaa of the sahaaba on clear points (such as stoning of the adulterer and the apostate is to be killed) and hadith are dealt with as if they are not important (women ruler hadith is common).
3) One of the main points of modernism is to change the role of women. They say it is permissible to mix men and women and to not wear hijaab. The modernists are impressed by the West and their conclusions always seem to agree with the views of the West.
****
Most of the information used for this article is from a seven part cassette series which is available from: Dar Makkah: 2040 S. Oneida #2A. Denver, CO 80224. The speaker frequently pointed out that his purpose was to warn about the dangers and mistakes of this movement and not to defame individual Muslims. Also, his information came from their writings, speeches, and discussions with these individuals, and not from what he heard from other people.
Extracted from Islaam.com
Monday, October 4, 2010
Challenge of Post Modernism: The Islamic Perspective
By Salman Ahmed Shaikh
(An extract)
Introduction
Postmodernism refers to a cultural, intellectual, and artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle. It embodies extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity and diversity. It is a reaction to modernism, but it is not a different ideology from modernism in every sense. It is critical of few ideas of modernism and it proposes emancipation from oppression manifested in culture, language, laws, customs, religion etc. Eclecticism and freedom of expression, in reaction to the rigidity and aesthetic limitations of modernism, are the hallmarks of the postmodern thought.
Deconstruction is a term which is used to denote the application of postmodern ideas of criticism, or theory, to a "text" or "artifact". A deconstruction is meant to undermine the frame of reference and assumptions that underpin the text. Postmodernism philosophy is also critical of Enlightenment universals.
Postmodernism philosophy asserts truth doesn't exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.” The postmodernists have given a new secular trinity of tolerance–diversity–choice.
Post Modernism ideas appear to have been conducive to, and strongly associated with, the feminist movement, racial equality movements, gay rights movements and even the peace movement, as well as various hybrids of these in the current anti-globalization movement.
--
History does not give us a regular pattern of human struggle towards a just and fair political, social and economic setup as described by Marx. Kant also did not tell when we will be able to say that we are living in an enlightened age. These views of Marx and Kant were more relevant to Europe only. (On the other hand,) the Muslim world provided a socially, economically and politically just system to the world for at least 50 years in the rule of Caliphates. In the period after caliphates too, Muslim world provided (to the Dark ages) most things Kant asked for in an enlightened age.
However, one clear difference has to be appreciated between Muslims and Islam. Most of the laws in Christianity were mainly developed by humans themselves like St. Paul. Therefore, when thinkers of 15th century and afterwards criticized the church and the clergy, their criticism was also on religion and it was justified as the Christianity and the Clergy were the one and the same thing.
This is not the case with Islam and Muslims. Islam was not invented or created by Muhammad (P.B.U.H). It was the message of God as was Christianity with the difference that the divinity of Christianity was obscured and later modified by Christians. Islam as a message of God remained pure. However, Muslims as all other human beings have not been and are not perfect in their acts and systems. But, the acts of Muslims can not said to be representative of what Islam is as Islam was not invented by Muslims.
Therefore, a distinction is to be made between the Muslims and Islam. Muslims may or maybe acting truly on Islam and hence their actions do not determine what Islam is. When we study the ‘Pure Islam’, we will find that there is not a single thing in Islam that is irrational or unjust. In the following lines, I will just give the brief highlights of Islamic teachings which may or may not be truly present or found in Muslim world as Islam is the word of God and not how Muslims act and lead their lives.
The Building Blocks of Islamic Philosophy and Teachings which are viewed as most controversial and misunderstood dare briefly summarized hereunder:
1. Islam gives the following right to women:
a. Muslim women must educate themselves.
b. Choose an occupation and earn their livelihood
c. Own a property.
d. Choose their husbands and right to separate from their husbands.
e. Entitlement to ‘Mehr’ (wealth at the start of marriage), ‘wirasat’ (wealth at the death of husband, children or father).
f. Islam does not make it obligatory on women to earn for their family. However, they can earn for the family and yet they are not obliged to spend their earnings on the family. However, men are obliged to spend their earnings on the family and they are made responsible for earning the livelihood for their children and wives.
g. Mother must be respected three times more than the father.
h. No man is allowed to have extra-marital relationships with other women.
i. Adultery is a severe crime in Islam.
2. Islam gives following rights to non-Muslims:
a. Non-Muslims can worship at their worship places.
b. No non-Muslim can be forcibly converted to Islam.
c. Muslims believe in all Prophets sent by God including Moses and Christ.
3. Islam’s concept of Jihad
a. Holy Quran says that Jihad can only be for the sake of eliminating injustice.
b. It is not q fight against non-Muslims. It is fight against injustice.
c. It can only be undertaken as a last resort to eliminating injustice.
d. It can only be undertaken by the government and not by the community on its own.
e. In all great battles of Badr, Uhud, Ihzab etc., Muslims in the leadership of Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H) fought a defensive war as the war was imposed on Muslims.
f. Jihad can not be for the expansion of the state, against innocents, against noncombatants, against the contract of peace if it has been signed and it can not be sudden and unannounced. So, suicide bombing against civilians is unislamic.
4. Islam concept of equality:
a. All men are equal. No white has superiority over a black.
b. Only Piety and Righteousness are the attributes that will distinguish us before God.
c. No rich has superiority over a poor.
d. All men should have equal chance to earn their livelihood.
e. Interest which results in concentration of wealth is prohibited.
Responding to Post Modernism: The Islamic Perspective
1. Knowledge was the main reason why Muslims fared so well in history for almost a millennium. Knowledge is the basis of progress. Greek philosophers regarded Knowledge as virtue. Similarly, the west also took lead from east with progress in knowledge. By knowledge, I mean not only the knowledge of religion and its related fields, but also the knowledge in sciences including social and technical sciences.
2. Ijtihad was an important element in Islamic world in heydays. It kept Muslims updated and pace with the world. The decline in Muslim civilization resulted from refraining from Ijtihad later on.
3. Freedom of expression is necessary in Muslim societies to pave the way of Ijtihad. In revitalizing the process of Ijtihad, not only the Muslims scholars begiven the chance to contribute, but the philosophers and experts of material sciences be given a chance to contribute in Ijtihad.
4. The institution of Family system is the basis of the social order in Muslim society. Muslims should not lose it at any cost.
5. Muslims should relate their philosophies with philosophies like Humanism, Liberalism, Democracy and show that they are in line with Islamic teachings and hence Islam is not opposed to liberty, human rights, women rights, minority rights, etc.
6. The economic teachings of Islam in a period when late capitalism is weakening can provide an alternative system to the world economy.
7. Extremism as a matter of principle be avoided and non-violence should be the strategy in domestic and international politics.
8. West has made trade blocs to unite and gain from synergy. Muslims should also need to be on one platform so that if future gives them the opportunity to give a new system, they can offer the Revitalized and Restructured Islamic thought from one platform.
(An extract)
Introduction
Postmodernism refers to a cultural, intellectual, and artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle. It embodies extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity and diversity. It is a reaction to modernism, but it is not a different ideology from modernism in every sense. It is critical of few ideas of modernism and it proposes emancipation from oppression manifested in culture, language, laws, customs, religion etc. Eclecticism and freedom of expression, in reaction to the rigidity and aesthetic limitations of modernism, are the hallmarks of the postmodern thought.
Deconstruction is a term which is used to denote the application of postmodern ideas of criticism, or theory, to a "text" or "artifact". A deconstruction is meant to undermine the frame of reference and assumptions that underpin the text. Postmodernism philosophy is also critical of Enlightenment universals.
Postmodernism philosophy asserts truth doesn't exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.” The postmodernists have given a new secular trinity of tolerance–diversity–choice.
Post Modernism ideas appear to have been conducive to, and strongly associated with, the feminist movement, racial equality movements, gay rights movements and even the peace movement, as well as various hybrids of these in the current anti-globalization movement.
--
History does not give us a regular pattern of human struggle towards a just and fair political, social and economic setup as described by Marx. Kant also did not tell when we will be able to say that we are living in an enlightened age. These views of Marx and Kant were more relevant to Europe only. (On the other hand,) the Muslim world provided a socially, economically and politically just system to the world for at least 50 years in the rule of Caliphates. In the period after caliphates too, Muslim world provided (to the Dark ages) most things Kant asked for in an enlightened age.
However, one clear difference has to be appreciated between Muslims and Islam. Most of the laws in Christianity were mainly developed by humans themselves like St. Paul. Therefore, when thinkers of 15th century and afterwards criticized the church and the clergy, their criticism was also on religion and it was justified as the Christianity and the Clergy were the one and the same thing.
This is not the case with Islam and Muslims. Islam was not invented or created by Muhammad (P.B.U.H). It was the message of God as was Christianity with the difference that the divinity of Christianity was obscured and later modified by Christians. Islam as a message of God remained pure. However, Muslims as all other human beings have not been and are not perfect in their acts and systems. But, the acts of Muslims can not said to be representative of what Islam is as Islam was not invented by Muslims.
Therefore, a distinction is to be made between the Muslims and Islam. Muslims may or maybe acting truly on Islam and hence their actions do not determine what Islam is. When we study the ‘Pure Islam’, we will find that there is not a single thing in Islam that is irrational or unjust. In the following lines, I will just give the brief highlights of Islamic teachings which may or may not be truly present or found in Muslim world as Islam is the word of God and not how Muslims act and lead their lives.
The Building Blocks of Islamic Philosophy and Teachings which are viewed as most controversial and misunderstood dare briefly summarized hereunder:
1. Islam gives the following right to women:
a. Muslim women must educate themselves.
b. Choose an occupation and earn their livelihood
c. Own a property.
d. Choose their husbands and right to separate from their husbands.
e. Entitlement to ‘Mehr’ (wealth at the start of marriage), ‘wirasat’ (wealth at the death of husband, children or father).
f. Islam does not make it obligatory on women to earn for their family. However, they can earn for the family and yet they are not obliged to spend their earnings on the family. However, men are obliged to spend their earnings on the family and they are made responsible for earning the livelihood for their children and wives.
g. Mother must be respected three times more than the father.
h. No man is allowed to have extra-marital relationships with other women.
i. Adultery is a severe crime in Islam.
2. Islam gives following rights to non-Muslims:
a. Non-Muslims can worship at their worship places.
b. No non-Muslim can be forcibly converted to Islam.
c. Muslims believe in all Prophets sent by God including Moses and Christ.
3. Islam’s concept of Jihad
a. Holy Quran says that Jihad can only be for the sake of eliminating injustice.
b. It is not q fight against non-Muslims. It is fight against injustice.
c. It can only be undertaken as a last resort to eliminating injustice.
d. It can only be undertaken by the government and not by the community on its own.
e. In all great battles of Badr, Uhud, Ihzab etc., Muslims in the leadership of Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H) fought a defensive war as the war was imposed on Muslims.
f. Jihad can not be for the expansion of the state, against innocents, against noncombatants, against the contract of peace if it has been signed and it can not be sudden and unannounced. So, suicide bombing against civilians is unislamic.
4. Islam concept of equality:
a. All men are equal. No white has superiority over a black.
b. Only Piety and Righteousness are the attributes that will distinguish us before God.
c. No rich has superiority over a poor.
d. All men should have equal chance to earn their livelihood.
e. Interest which results in concentration of wealth is prohibited.
Responding to Post Modernism: The Islamic Perspective
1. Knowledge was the main reason why Muslims fared so well in history for almost a millennium. Knowledge is the basis of progress. Greek philosophers regarded Knowledge as virtue. Similarly, the west also took lead from east with progress in knowledge. By knowledge, I mean not only the knowledge of religion and its related fields, but also the knowledge in sciences including social and technical sciences.
2. Ijtihad was an important element in Islamic world in heydays. It kept Muslims updated and pace with the world. The decline in Muslim civilization resulted from refraining from Ijtihad later on.
3. Freedom of expression is necessary in Muslim societies to pave the way of Ijtihad. In revitalizing the process of Ijtihad, not only the Muslims scholars begiven the chance to contribute, but the philosophers and experts of material sciences be given a chance to contribute in Ijtihad.
4. The institution of Family system is the basis of the social order in Muslim society. Muslims should not lose it at any cost.
5. Muslims should relate their philosophies with philosophies like Humanism, Liberalism, Democracy and show that they are in line with Islamic teachings and hence Islam is not opposed to liberty, human rights, women rights, minority rights, etc.
6. The economic teachings of Islam in a period when late capitalism is weakening can provide an alternative system to the world economy.
7. Extremism as a matter of principle be avoided and non-violence should be the strategy in domestic and international politics.
8. West has made trade blocs to unite and gain from synergy. Muslims should also need to be on one platform so that if future gives them the opportunity to give a new system, they can offer the Revitalized and Restructured Islamic thought from one platform.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Postmodernism and "the Other"
Postmodernism and the Other
The New Imperialism of Western Culture
Reviewed By Joanne McEwan
Author : Ziauddin Sardar
Publisher : Pluto Press, London, 1998
Pages : 345
Postmodernism is one of the most difficult subjects to define and probably the most overplayed at that. With the multitude of academics from different disciplines contributing to the discourse it can be a dry and tediously deep subject.
Sardar, however, presents its definition in plain English. Not only that, he directly exposes postmodernism for what it really is and what it means to those of the non-west (the Other) it claims to champion.
Sardar states the principles of postmodernism clearly.
The first is that truth is relative, where fiction and narrative provide a better diction on human behavior than religion, philosophy and theory.
The second principle is the denial of reality where we see what we want to see.
The third is that the world is simulated into imagery and representations rather than a world that is real and tangible.
On this point Sardar states, “This means that the world has been transformed into a theatre where everything is artificially constructed. Politics is a stage-managed for mass consumption. Television documentaries are transformed and presented as entertainment. Journalism blurs the distinction between fact and fiction. Living individuals become characters in soap operas and fictional characters assume real lives. Everything happens instantaneously and everybody gets a live feed on everything that is happening in the global theatre.” (p. 23)
The fourth and fifth principles are life has no meaning and everything is doubtful which naturally follow from the previous three.
The fifth and last is that postmodernism is concerned with the multiplicity of everything. All differences are welcomed and privilege is replaced with equality in race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation.
The effect of these principles on the non-west is shown to be negative and threatening. The fifth principle, although appearing to be positive in concept, in reality, reeks with duplicity and hypocrisy.
Sardar removes these principles from the constraints of academia, and brings them all to life in vivid examples from international politics, film, literature, consumer lifestyle, popular culture, science and religion. Catchy and somewhat satirical headings make it lighter reading.
In the chapter “A Grand Memory for Forgetting” Sardar shows how history has been restructured to the tastes of postmodernism. Taking Disney's animated film Pocahontas as an example, he describes how the film is very different from the true story. This is not the first time we have heard this from critics but Sardar takes the discussion further.
He identifies the hints of the colonialist and orientalist past forming a film that stands for nothing more than white supremism. In approximately 40 pages Sardar analyses this film and the related historic content.
For example, he says, notice also how in the role of Pocahontas, the Native American girl, is meaningless until she has a white man to save from savages. Also, unlike any other Disney film, the animals don't talk to the human being, in this case Pocahontas. This realistic touch has added to a sense of ‘truth' in the tale.
Despite the common errors in the story, Disney is at the same accurate in many other aspects – for example, John Smith's compass and Pocahontas cart-wheeling around (historic records state these particular incidents, among others).
As Sardar surmises, “Their magical confabulation makes it possible to revisit history in a new, improved fashion, simultaneously it makes it more difficult to disentangle the mythical refashioning from recorded history and both confidence tricks operate to distract attention from the main import of the exercise…” (p. 92)
The images from this film are now fixated on the minds of children to the extent that the fairytale has become fact and the true story has become a myth.
Consumer lifestyle, which so dominates our lives, is discussed in the chapter “Recycling Shampoo.” In true postmodern fashion, the west absorbs the identity of the ‘Other' through consumerism in both the west and non-west.
Take a walk down the city high street in any western town and observe how the non-west is fashioned to the tastes of consumers. In the U.K. and the U.S. you will find the colonial past romanticized and glorified through cool, cotton, casual clothing in shops like Banana Republic, Safari Clothing, East India Company and British India. All sell merchandise that suggests an aura of nostalgia for the imperialist, triumphant past rather than a whiff of disgust for its barbarism.
The Body Shop is another example of postmodern hype. It exists solely from appropriating the products and experiences of cultures of the non-west. Its creams, oils and lotions are cleverly marketed as natural, ethnic and exotic with the help of the minimal packaging and short descriptions of their origins.
Now they have found their way ‘back' to non-western countries. But, as Sardar says, “it is when these products are exported back to the Third World that they lose their innocence. When Body Shop products arrive in a non-western country, they are no more natural than any other processed commodity. They have the cachet of a western product and are consumed by the natives as such: the inferiority of the indigenous product becomes worthy of consumption by the locals only when it is refined by the west is further entrenched.” (p. 125)
The non-west is a growing market with their proliferation in a youthful population compared to the diminishing youth in the west. Unlike during the modern period, where the Third World was told just to buy, in the postmodern period they are told to buy and change their culture. The Marlboro Man is an example, which not only sells a product western doctors have proven to be detrimental to one's health, but sells the complete get-up and image that goes along with it: the cowboy look with that distinct coolness.
Postmodernism's affect on the ‘Other' has a bleak prognosis. One can hardly imagine there is much of a cure. But what adds to the appeal of this book is the last chapter, “Surviving Postmodernism,” in which Sardar offers modest and positive conceptual ways for those of the non-west to counter this force.
He states that from the perspective of the non-western cultures, surviving postmodernism means moving towards tradition. This is apposed to traditionalism.
Tradition is, according to Sardar, changeable and proactive, whereas traditionalism is passive, rigid and reactionary. Sardar indicates the knee-jerk type reaction of movements (although he doesn't give any examples) that dwell on the past and hold fast to rules and regulations that are no longer appropriate.
This concept of turning to tradition to quell the wave of postmodernism is further explained with reference to the poetry and philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal on the Islamic concept of fitrah or innate nature.
This is unlike postmodernism where the individual's ego takes center stage. Says Sardar, “The notion of fitrah is the antithesis of western individualism, not because it denies individual freedom, personality, identity and responsibility – all these are basic ideas fundamental to an Islamic outlook – but because in the Islamic purview the individual is only conceivable within a web of essential relationships wherein their individuality is neither dominant nor the only significant consideration if the person is to be true to his or her innate nature.” (p. 275)
Sardar states that, according to Iqbal, a community can only be self-aware if it holds on to its memory, tradition and living history. Despite its Islamic roots this concept can be applied to non-Muslim cultures of the non-west.
Sardar also suggests the need for cultural autonomy and authenticity that should not be drowned by the dominant western culture that is over-shadowing the non-west today.
Lastly, the author suggests that the affected cultures and countries have to be aware and admit to the darker side of their past. The non-west has cultures that are valuable enough to hold on to, but there are aspects from the political to the social, that need to be addressed. And it is through self-assessment that they can improve and achieve.
Postmodernism and the ‘Other' is an immense read. It is packed with anecdotes and analogies referring to everyday life in the western or non-western world. Throughout the book, it is difficult not be appalled at the injustices and moral relativism of postmodernism.
As a Muslim academic, author and editor of some well-respected books on Islam, one can sense Sardar's convictions to Islamic thought; meanwhile appreciate his objectivity and interest in non-Muslim cultures, and other religions. The sections on the plight on the Native Americans and Aboriginals are good examples.
What is also impressive is the author's extensive knowledge on just about every discipline from popular culture to religion to the annals of science. Sardar's discourse is bold, polemic and objective: he doesn't mince his words. A trip to the Body Shop, or anything of similar import will never be the same again.
http://discover.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1153698300038&pagename=Zone-English-Discover_Islam%2FDIELayout#ixzz0y8XMgql6
The New Imperialism of Western Culture
Reviewed By Joanne McEwan
Author : Ziauddin Sardar
Publisher : Pluto Press, London, 1998
Pages : 345
Postmodernism is one of the most difficult subjects to define and probably the most overplayed at that. With the multitude of academics from different disciplines contributing to the discourse it can be a dry and tediously deep subject.
Sardar, however, presents its definition in plain English. Not only that, he directly exposes postmodernism for what it really is and what it means to those of the non-west (the Other) it claims to champion.
Sardar states the principles of postmodernism clearly.
The first is that truth is relative, where fiction and narrative provide a better diction on human behavior than religion, philosophy and theory.
The second principle is the denial of reality where we see what we want to see.
The third is that the world is simulated into imagery and representations rather than a world that is real and tangible.
On this point Sardar states, “This means that the world has been transformed into a theatre where everything is artificially constructed. Politics is a stage-managed for mass consumption. Television documentaries are transformed and presented as entertainment. Journalism blurs the distinction between fact and fiction. Living individuals become characters in soap operas and fictional characters assume real lives. Everything happens instantaneously and everybody gets a live feed on everything that is happening in the global theatre.” (p. 23)
The fourth and fifth principles are life has no meaning and everything is doubtful which naturally follow from the previous three.
The fifth and last is that postmodernism is concerned with the multiplicity of everything. All differences are welcomed and privilege is replaced with equality in race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation.
The effect of these principles on the non-west is shown to be negative and threatening. The fifth principle, although appearing to be positive in concept, in reality, reeks with duplicity and hypocrisy.
Sardar removes these principles from the constraints of academia, and brings them all to life in vivid examples from international politics, film, literature, consumer lifestyle, popular culture, science and religion. Catchy and somewhat satirical headings make it lighter reading.
In the chapter “A Grand Memory for Forgetting” Sardar shows how history has been restructured to the tastes of postmodernism. Taking Disney's animated film Pocahontas as an example, he describes how the film is very different from the true story. This is not the first time we have heard this from critics but Sardar takes the discussion further.
He identifies the hints of the colonialist and orientalist past forming a film that stands for nothing more than white supremism. In approximately 40 pages Sardar analyses this film and the related historic content.
For example, he says, notice also how in the role of Pocahontas, the Native American girl, is meaningless until she has a white man to save from savages. Also, unlike any other Disney film, the animals don't talk to the human being, in this case Pocahontas. This realistic touch has added to a sense of ‘truth' in the tale.
Despite the common errors in the story, Disney is at the same accurate in many other aspects – for example, John Smith's compass and Pocahontas cart-wheeling around (historic records state these particular incidents, among others).
As Sardar surmises, “Their magical confabulation makes it possible to revisit history in a new, improved fashion, simultaneously it makes it more difficult to disentangle the mythical refashioning from recorded history and both confidence tricks operate to distract attention from the main import of the exercise…” (p. 92)
The images from this film are now fixated on the minds of children to the extent that the fairytale has become fact and the true story has become a myth.
Consumer lifestyle, which so dominates our lives, is discussed in the chapter “Recycling Shampoo.” In true postmodern fashion, the west absorbs the identity of the ‘Other' through consumerism in both the west and non-west.
Take a walk down the city high street in any western town and observe how the non-west is fashioned to the tastes of consumers. In the U.K. and the U.S. you will find the colonial past romanticized and glorified through cool, cotton, casual clothing in shops like Banana Republic, Safari Clothing, East India Company and British India. All sell merchandise that suggests an aura of nostalgia for the imperialist, triumphant past rather than a whiff of disgust for its barbarism.
The Body Shop is another example of postmodern hype. It exists solely from appropriating the products and experiences of cultures of the non-west. Its creams, oils and lotions are cleverly marketed as natural, ethnic and exotic with the help of the minimal packaging and short descriptions of their origins.
Now they have found their way ‘back' to non-western countries. But, as Sardar says, “it is when these products are exported back to the Third World that they lose their innocence. When Body Shop products arrive in a non-western country, they are no more natural than any other processed commodity. They have the cachet of a western product and are consumed by the natives as such: the inferiority of the indigenous product becomes worthy of consumption by the locals only when it is refined by the west is further entrenched.” (p. 125)
The non-west is a growing market with their proliferation in a youthful population compared to the diminishing youth in the west. Unlike during the modern period, where the Third World was told just to buy, in the postmodern period they are told to buy and change their culture. The Marlboro Man is an example, which not only sells a product western doctors have proven to be detrimental to one's health, but sells the complete get-up and image that goes along with it: the cowboy look with that distinct coolness.
Postmodernism's affect on the ‘Other' has a bleak prognosis. One can hardly imagine there is much of a cure. But what adds to the appeal of this book is the last chapter, “Surviving Postmodernism,” in which Sardar offers modest and positive conceptual ways for those of the non-west to counter this force.
He states that from the perspective of the non-western cultures, surviving postmodernism means moving towards tradition. This is apposed to traditionalism.
Tradition is, according to Sardar, changeable and proactive, whereas traditionalism is passive, rigid and reactionary. Sardar indicates the knee-jerk type reaction of movements (although he doesn't give any examples) that dwell on the past and hold fast to rules and regulations that are no longer appropriate.
This concept of turning to tradition to quell the wave of postmodernism is further explained with reference to the poetry and philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal on the Islamic concept of fitrah or innate nature.
This is unlike postmodernism where the individual's ego takes center stage. Says Sardar, “The notion of fitrah is the antithesis of western individualism, not because it denies individual freedom, personality, identity and responsibility – all these are basic ideas fundamental to an Islamic outlook – but because in the Islamic purview the individual is only conceivable within a web of essential relationships wherein their individuality is neither dominant nor the only significant consideration if the person is to be true to his or her innate nature.” (p. 275)
Sardar states that, according to Iqbal, a community can only be self-aware if it holds on to its memory, tradition and living history. Despite its Islamic roots this concept can be applied to non-Muslim cultures of the non-west.
Sardar also suggests the need for cultural autonomy and authenticity that should not be drowned by the dominant western culture that is over-shadowing the non-west today.
Lastly, the author suggests that the affected cultures and countries have to be aware and admit to the darker side of their past. The non-west has cultures that are valuable enough to hold on to, but there are aspects from the political to the social, that need to be addressed. And it is through self-assessment that they can improve and achieve.
Postmodernism and the ‘Other' is an immense read. It is packed with anecdotes and analogies referring to everyday life in the western or non-western world. Throughout the book, it is difficult not be appalled at the injustices and moral relativism of postmodernism.
As a Muslim academic, author and editor of some well-respected books on Islam, one can sense Sardar's convictions to Islamic thought; meanwhile appreciate his objectivity and interest in non-Muslim cultures, and other religions. The sections on the plight on the Native Americans and Aboriginals are good examples.
What is also impressive is the author's extensive knowledge on just about every discipline from popular culture to religion to the annals of science. Sardar's discourse is bold, polemic and objective: he doesn't mince his words. A trip to the Body Shop, or anything of similar import will never be the same again.
http://discover.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1153698300038&pagename=Zone-English-Discover_Islam%2FDIELayout#ixzz0y8XMgql6
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Islam, Muslims and Multiculturalism
Islam, Muslims and Multiculturalism: Conference Report
Yoginder Sikand
Much has been written about conflicts involving religious communities across the world by journalists, academics and security ‘experts’. Although these conflicts have local roots, and owe to a host of causes, some locally-specific, others regional and even global, a common factor that links all of them are supremacist notions of the religious ‘self’ and, associated with these, negative images of the religious ‘other’ that are deeply-rooted in dominant understandings of religion. Efforts to resolve these conflicts must, some time or the other, necessarily address head-on the notion of the ‘other’ in religious thought, to critique understandings that brand all non-believers as ‘enemies’ and dismiss their faiths as of no worth at all. This critique needs to go hand-in-hand with efforts to promote more positive understandings of the religious ‘other’ and of other faith traditions and belief systems. In short, while most conflicts involving people of different religious communities are rooted in political and economic factors, they cannot be reduced entirely to them. The crucial role that negative, exclusivist, intolerant and supremacist understandings of religion and the religious ‘other’ play in creating and in fanning these conflicts cannot be denied.
That, in short, was what I learnt at a conference in Singapore that I recently participated in. Organised by the official Islamic council of Singapore, the Majlis Ugama Islam Singapore (MUIS), the conference brought together several dozen academics and activists, Muslims as well as others, from across the world to deliberate on the vexed issue of Islam, Muslims and multiculturalism in our globalised world.
‘Islam is not simply about Muslims alone,’ stressed the well-known Oxford-based Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan in his opening remarks. ‘Rather, it is about us and others working together constructing our common future. We need to dialogue—not just to talk to the other but also to listen to the other and to learn from the other.’ And, he went on, it was not enough just for Muslims and others to talk and listen to each other, but it was also necessary to be open to the possibility of changing and growing as a result of being in dialogic conversation with each other.
That inspiring message was echoed by Ustad Fatris Bakaram, Deputy Mufti of Singapore, who pointed out that multiculturalism was by no means a new experience for Muslims. Medina, where the Prophet and his companions shifted from Mecca, was a thriving multicultural and multi-religious society, as was Christian-ruled Abysinnia, where the Prophet instructed several of his companions to seek shelter, and where, for the first time, Muslims were able to practice their faith free from oppression. Critiquing the claims of radical Islamists (who are, of course, not known for any but the most stern views about non-Muslims and their religions), the Ustaz argued that the intention of the Prophet in migrating to Medina was not to set up ‘Islamic rule’ or Islamic political supremacy, as is often claimed. Rather, it was simply to seek a place where Muslims could practice their faith freely. It was thus wholly erroneous to argue, as Islamists do, the Ustaz explained, that only in an ‘Islamic state’, ruled according to shariah laws, and where Muslims were politically dominant, could Muslims willingly accept multiculturalism.
‘Muslims must learn to live with, and relate to, others amicably,’ the Ustaz insisted, arguing that unless this happened conflict, violent or otherwise, was inevitable. Muslims simply could not afford to continue to live in denial of the extremist tendencies that existed, he added, arguing that it was necessary for Muslims to critique and denounce radicalism and supremacism in the name of Islam that has now emerged as a global menace. ‘We cannot remain isolationist by seeking refuge in the comfort of our own communities,’ he argued. He lamented the fact that many Muslims, even in ‘progressive’ Singapore, hesitated to have close interaction with people of other faiths, with some even fearing that this was prohibited by Islam and that it was a threat to their identity as Muslims. A major issue that urgently cried out to be addressed in this regard, he said, was the widely-prevalent notion that Islam seeks or demands Islamic or Muslim domination over others. This powerful tool in the repertoire of self-styled Islamic radicals, he said, was a potent threat to multiculturalism.
The Ustaz was, likewise, critical of the marked tendency among Muslims to romanticize their past through which they implicitly sought to deny the very real problems in traditional Muslim thought and historical practice about the place and role of the religious ‘other’. In this regard, he insisted that several fiqh or juridical rules developed by the classical Islamic scholars in the early and medieval period with regard to non-Muslims urgently needed to be revised as not only were they not relevant to today’s context but they also conduced to conflictual relations with people of other faiths. The classical notion of non-Muslim territories or lands not ruled by the shariah as dar ul-harb or ‘land of war’, he opined, was, in today’s age, ‘unrealistic and archaic’. Arguing against those who might claim that his stance was tantamount to distorting the shariah, he pointed out that the notions of dar ul-islam and dar ul-harb find no mention at all in the Quran. Rather, he said, they were the product or ijtihad of later jurists, whose readings were based on the particular social and historical context in which they lived and to which they responded. To blindly accept their views, he opined, was sheer ‘ignorance’. The division of the world into dar ul-islam and dar ul-harb, so favoured by Islamists, he insisted, represented a binary thinking that had no basis in the Quran. It was also, he added, a major challenge to Muslims living as minorities, who were made to feel ‘guilty’ for living in what was termed dar ul-harb.
The Ustaz spoke about the need to understand Islamic injunctions by focusing on what are called ‘the intentions of the shariah’ (maqasid-e shariah), which would facilitate a much-need shift from a sternly literalist approach to legal matters. Accordingly, certain fiqh rules might need to change in changing contexts to uphold the underlying aims of the law. Critiquing scripturalist and legal literalism, he argued that numerous fiqh rules to do with relations with people of other faiths needed to be subjected to ijtihad or creative reasoning and re-interpretation in a contextually-appropriate manner in order to promote inter-community and inter-faith relations. This, he cautioned, was not a means to discard scripture, unlike what some Muslims might claim, but, rather, to re-read the scripture in today’s context in ‘an enlightened manner’. It was not tantamount to abandoning the shariah. Rather, it was a plea to realize the underlying aims of the shariah, which included justice, equality and friendly relations with others, in a contextually-sensitive manner.
While rethinking fiqh rules and received notions of other faiths and their adherents was a crucial task for Muslim scholars and activists to engage in so as to improve relations between Muslims and others, the Ustaz added that it was also crucial for Muslims to think beyond their own communities and work for the general good, collaborating together with people of other faiths in this task. In this way, he said, Muslims would learn to accept, even celebrate, religious diversity, to contribute to the welfare of the entire society (and not just of their own community), and to be, as he put it, ‘inclusive and adaptive, no matter in which environment they live in.’
Further dwelling on the importance of the task of critiquing supremacist notions of Islam and Muslim communal identity and of promoting alternate, more open interpretations of the religious ‘other’ in Islamic thought, Abdullah Saeed, Director of the National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies, Melbourne, Australia, pointed out that no religious tradition, Islam included, was a fixed, permanent and homogenous entity that had not undergone any transformation since its inception. Rather, he said, religious traditions are like living beings that emerge and grow over time and adapt to different contexts—although, of course, this is not how religious literalists and other ‘fundamentalists’ imagine them to be. In this regard, he added, in today’s context, where communities are in closer proximity than ever before, it was imperative for Muslims to develop new, and more positive, understandings of people of other faiths and their belief systems and of relations with them. A marked feature of today’s global context was the notion of common and equal citizenship, which is something entirely new. This, he said, necessitated the revision of several traditional Muslim understandings of the ‘other’, because these were rooted in a context of fundamental inequality between Muslims and other people. Mere tolerance of other faiths and their followers would no longer suffice, for it was not based on a positive value for engaging with the religious ‘other’. Rather, he argued, Muslims need to move beyond, to accept the ‘other’ and to champion religious pluralism based on common citizenship, while at the same time recognizing and respecting cultural differences. Yet, he said, multiculturalism has its clear limits, for, if stretched too far, it could lead to religious ghettoisation. It should be tempered, he suggested, with active engagement with people of other faiths for the common good.
Multiculturalism must not mean or lead to freezing communities into separate boxes or reifying religious traditions, argued Reuven Firestone, a trained Rabbi, who heads a centre for Jewish-Muslim Understanding in the USA. It must go beyond respecting cultural and religious differences to actively learning from and sharing with people of different faiths and cultures. This, he said, was precisely what the early Muslim Arabs did, because of which they were able to make marvelous strides in various fields of human activity. One of the major reasons for the later decline of Arab-Muslim civilization, he pointed out, was the shift to more exclusivist notions of the religious ‘other’ that did not conduce to learning from or interacting with them.
Lived Islam is a diverse discursive tradition, understood and expressed in diverse forms, and thus offers a variety of responses to, and interpretations of, other faiths and their adherents and relations with them, stressed the noted Indonesian scholar Azyumardi Azra, Professor at the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta. These responses ranged from sternly exclusivist and hostile to open and inclusive, each of which presented itself as authoritatively and authentically ‘Islamic’. Critiquing exclusivist and hostile notions of the other in Muslim thought was a necessary task, Azra said, and there were tools available within the broader Islamic tradition, such as tajdid (renewal) and islah (reform) that could be used for this, although not in the strictly literalist manner as advocated by self-styled Salafis and the Wahhabis. This task needed to go along with attempts to ‘indigenise’ Islam to make it part of, and responsive to, local cultures instead of appearing to be a foreign, specifically Arab, cultural import. What he was probably hinting at was the tendency of Muslims to conflate Islam with Arabic language and culture. In this way, he opined, Muslims would be able to understand and live their faith in a manner suitable to the local cultural context that they shared with people of other religions and thus be culturally more integrated with them. Alongside this task of the ‘indigenisation’ of Islam in local cultures what was also required, Azra suggested, was for Muslim scholars to promote the Quranic concept of Muslims as the median or balanced community (ummatan wasatan), followers of the ‘middle path’. This ‘wasatiya Islam’, as Azra termed it, could serve as a powerful counter to Muslim or ‘Islamic’ exclusivism and supremacy.
The thrust of Tariq Ramadan’s presentation was a plea for rethinking fundamental categories in both secular as well as Muslim/Islamic thought. Dwelling on the latter, he argued that ‘reform’ (for which he used the terms islah and ihya) in Muslim/Islamic thought on the question of the religious ‘other’ is an indispensable necessity, although many might balk at this. While the Islamic texts could not be changed or ‘reformed’, what could, he said, were our understandings of them on certain matters. This is because religious understandings are a human product and so can change in response to changing social and historical contexts. Religious traditions, he noted, are a ‘moving reality’ and one’s understanding of one’s tradition is—or should be—also dynamic and open to being transformed with shifts in time and context. The ‘reform’ in Muslim thought with regard to the religious ‘other’ and the fact of religious pluralism that Ramadan suggested was, he said, not to adapt to standards set by others or to be accepted by them but, rather, to make the world a better place for all—for Muslims and for others. Hence, he clarified, what he was advocating was what he called ‘transformational reform’, which was distinct from ‘adaptational reform’. Arguing against those who see the shariah as a closed, fixed body of laws incapable of change and reform, he appealed for a fundamental reform in fiqh rules about people of other faiths and religious pluralism and a concomitant shift in focus in Islamic thought from the rules of fiqh to the basic ‘principles of fiqh’ (usul al-fiqh), through which more appropriate and positive fiqh rules could be formulated to promote inter-community dialogue and solidarity in accordance with today’s context of religious pluralism.
Echoing what several speakers before him had stressed, Ramadan called for the Islamic texts to be read in context and for what he called a new ‘Islamic applied ethics’ that would conduce to better relations between Muslims and others. Again, like numerous other speakers, he indicated the crucial need to critique and challenge certain classical ‘Islamic’ definitions and terms (most notably, the concept of the dars) that, he argued, were a product of a historical context that no longer exists and that militate against better relations with others. He also suggested that Muslims needed to broaden their imagination of what was ‘Islamic’: for instance, a just, egalitarian law could not be branded as ‘un-Islamic’ or ‘anti-shariah’ simply because it was formulated by a non-Muslim political authority. If it was indeed just and egalitarian, it must also be regarded as in accordance with the shariah or even as part of it.
A similar widening of approach and perspective was needed, Ramadan suggested, in Muslims’ understanding of the notion of the ummah. The Prophet Muhammad, he noted, included the Jews of Medina as part of the same ummah as the Muslims, thus suggesting that widely-held Muslim understandings of the notion were restrictive and narrow in a manner not warranted by the Prophet’s own practice. Likewise, he said, Muslims needed to broaden their horizons and be concerned not only for and about themselves but, indeed, for the whole of humankind. ‘Muslims will be respected by others if they contribute and work for not just themselves but for others as well, working for and with them, for siding with the poor, for struggling for freedom and justice for all,’ he very rightly remarked.
For me, the highlight of the conference was hearing the arrestingly charismatic Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, head of the New York-based Cordoba Initiative, speak. The soft-spoken but extremely articulate Egyptian-born and Britain-educated Imam has been in the forefront of efforts to promote dialogue between people of different faiths, inspired by a truly universalistic—and, so, to me, powerfully attractive—understanding of religion. He began by pointing out that Muslims are today perceived as a ‘problem’ the world over. Owing to the actions of self-styled Islamists, Islam is now regarded by many as a security threat. This perception, he said, cannot be denied or wished away simply through apologetic exercises. Across the world, Muslim groups, using the vocabulary of Islam, have spearheaded violent political movements in the name of Islam. This is why, he said, many non-Muslims perceive Islam to be synonymous with violence and even terror. This undeniable fact, he went on, is a challenge to Muslims concerned about their faith, who must act to rescue it from terrorists who use it to give it a bad name.
The Imam debunked certain key myths that many Muslims, wedded to a narrow, communal understanding of Islam, zealously uphold. He pointed out that the Quran addresses itself not to Muslims as a communal group, but, rather to what it calls ‘believers’ or muminun. And this, he argued, is what the companions of the Prophet Muhammad saw themselves as. Based on his interpretation of certain key Quranic verses, the Imam pointed out that the category of muminun was not limited to those who call themselves by the Arabic term ‘Muslim’, and who generally construe the term as referring to a particular community. Rather, he persuasively argued, the muminun that the Quran talks about, for which any other suitable term could be used in other languages, included everyone, no matter what rituals he followed, what language he worshipped in, or whatever name he called himself by, who believed in the one God and in divine accountability after death and practiced good. This, he said, was the basic religion taught by all the prophets of God. Various prophets might have had their own methods of prayer and rituals, but these should be seen not as separate religions or as the bases of separate communities. Rather, they were more like different schools of thought or, in Arabic, mazhabs, of the same religion, or different sunnahs or paths. ‘The various prophets had different signatures, but they shared the same message’, he explained. All the prophets, the Quran says, were of the same status, and, critiquing Muslim claims to supremacy, he argued that nowhere does the Quran declare the Prophet Muhammad to have been the best among them or the most superior—contrary to what many Muslims contend. In actual fact, he pointed out, the Quran warns people not to make any distinction between the prophets. To imagine that the ‘believers’, in the Quranic sense, referred to a particular community that practiced a particular set of rituals in a particular language, as most Muslims do, was, the Imam argued, not at all in accordance with what the Quran says.
The universalistic understanding of religion and the notion of ‘believer’ that he argued the Quran actually preached (which is in marked contrast to how many of those who call themselves ‘Muslims’ understand them), the Imam suggested, was a powerful counter to the communalistic interpretations of Islam that have been, and still are, powerfully dominant and that inherently conduce to conflict. It was, he contended, also a firm basis to bring together the muminun in different communities, no matter what communal label they defined themselves with, to work together for a better world.
A host of other speakers addressed the two-day conference, which was easily one of the most engaging and enriching that I have attended so far.
Yoginder Sikand
Much has been written about conflicts involving religious communities across the world by journalists, academics and security ‘experts’. Although these conflicts have local roots, and owe to a host of causes, some locally-specific, others regional and even global, a common factor that links all of them are supremacist notions of the religious ‘self’ and, associated with these, negative images of the religious ‘other’ that are deeply-rooted in dominant understandings of religion. Efforts to resolve these conflicts must, some time or the other, necessarily address head-on the notion of the ‘other’ in religious thought, to critique understandings that brand all non-believers as ‘enemies’ and dismiss their faiths as of no worth at all. This critique needs to go hand-in-hand with efforts to promote more positive understandings of the religious ‘other’ and of other faith traditions and belief systems. In short, while most conflicts involving people of different religious communities are rooted in political and economic factors, they cannot be reduced entirely to them. The crucial role that negative, exclusivist, intolerant and supremacist understandings of religion and the religious ‘other’ play in creating and in fanning these conflicts cannot be denied.
That, in short, was what I learnt at a conference in Singapore that I recently participated in. Organised by the official Islamic council of Singapore, the Majlis Ugama Islam Singapore (MUIS), the conference brought together several dozen academics and activists, Muslims as well as others, from across the world to deliberate on the vexed issue of Islam, Muslims and multiculturalism in our globalised world.
‘Islam is not simply about Muslims alone,’ stressed the well-known Oxford-based Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan in his opening remarks. ‘Rather, it is about us and others working together constructing our common future. We need to dialogue—not just to talk to the other but also to listen to the other and to learn from the other.’ And, he went on, it was not enough just for Muslims and others to talk and listen to each other, but it was also necessary to be open to the possibility of changing and growing as a result of being in dialogic conversation with each other.
That inspiring message was echoed by Ustad Fatris Bakaram, Deputy Mufti of Singapore, who pointed out that multiculturalism was by no means a new experience for Muslims. Medina, where the Prophet and his companions shifted from Mecca, was a thriving multicultural and multi-religious society, as was Christian-ruled Abysinnia, where the Prophet instructed several of his companions to seek shelter, and where, for the first time, Muslims were able to practice their faith free from oppression. Critiquing the claims of radical Islamists (who are, of course, not known for any but the most stern views about non-Muslims and their religions), the Ustaz argued that the intention of the Prophet in migrating to Medina was not to set up ‘Islamic rule’ or Islamic political supremacy, as is often claimed. Rather, it was simply to seek a place where Muslims could practice their faith freely. It was thus wholly erroneous to argue, as Islamists do, the Ustaz explained, that only in an ‘Islamic state’, ruled according to shariah laws, and where Muslims were politically dominant, could Muslims willingly accept multiculturalism.
‘Muslims must learn to live with, and relate to, others amicably,’ the Ustaz insisted, arguing that unless this happened conflict, violent or otherwise, was inevitable. Muslims simply could not afford to continue to live in denial of the extremist tendencies that existed, he added, arguing that it was necessary for Muslims to critique and denounce radicalism and supremacism in the name of Islam that has now emerged as a global menace. ‘We cannot remain isolationist by seeking refuge in the comfort of our own communities,’ he argued. He lamented the fact that many Muslims, even in ‘progressive’ Singapore, hesitated to have close interaction with people of other faiths, with some even fearing that this was prohibited by Islam and that it was a threat to their identity as Muslims. A major issue that urgently cried out to be addressed in this regard, he said, was the widely-prevalent notion that Islam seeks or demands Islamic or Muslim domination over others. This powerful tool in the repertoire of self-styled Islamic radicals, he said, was a potent threat to multiculturalism.
The Ustaz was, likewise, critical of the marked tendency among Muslims to romanticize their past through which they implicitly sought to deny the very real problems in traditional Muslim thought and historical practice about the place and role of the religious ‘other’. In this regard, he insisted that several fiqh or juridical rules developed by the classical Islamic scholars in the early and medieval period with regard to non-Muslims urgently needed to be revised as not only were they not relevant to today’s context but they also conduced to conflictual relations with people of other faiths. The classical notion of non-Muslim territories or lands not ruled by the shariah as dar ul-harb or ‘land of war’, he opined, was, in today’s age, ‘unrealistic and archaic’. Arguing against those who might claim that his stance was tantamount to distorting the shariah, he pointed out that the notions of dar ul-islam and dar ul-harb find no mention at all in the Quran. Rather, he said, they were the product or ijtihad of later jurists, whose readings were based on the particular social and historical context in which they lived and to which they responded. To blindly accept their views, he opined, was sheer ‘ignorance’. The division of the world into dar ul-islam and dar ul-harb, so favoured by Islamists, he insisted, represented a binary thinking that had no basis in the Quran. It was also, he added, a major challenge to Muslims living as minorities, who were made to feel ‘guilty’ for living in what was termed dar ul-harb.
The Ustaz spoke about the need to understand Islamic injunctions by focusing on what are called ‘the intentions of the shariah’ (maqasid-e shariah), which would facilitate a much-need shift from a sternly literalist approach to legal matters. Accordingly, certain fiqh rules might need to change in changing contexts to uphold the underlying aims of the law. Critiquing scripturalist and legal literalism, he argued that numerous fiqh rules to do with relations with people of other faiths needed to be subjected to ijtihad or creative reasoning and re-interpretation in a contextually-appropriate manner in order to promote inter-community and inter-faith relations. This, he cautioned, was not a means to discard scripture, unlike what some Muslims might claim, but, rather, to re-read the scripture in today’s context in ‘an enlightened manner’. It was not tantamount to abandoning the shariah. Rather, it was a plea to realize the underlying aims of the shariah, which included justice, equality and friendly relations with others, in a contextually-sensitive manner.
While rethinking fiqh rules and received notions of other faiths and their adherents was a crucial task for Muslim scholars and activists to engage in so as to improve relations between Muslims and others, the Ustaz added that it was also crucial for Muslims to think beyond their own communities and work for the general good, collaborating together with people of other faiths in this task. In this way, he said, Muslims would learn to accept, even celebrate, religious diversity, to contribute to the welfare of the entire society (and not just of their own community), and to be, as he put it, ‘inclusive and adaptive, no matter in which environment they live in.’
Further dwelling on the importance of the task of critiquing supremacist notions of Islam and Muslim communal identity and of promoting alternate, more open interpretations of the religious ‘other’ in Islamic thought, Abdullah Saeed, Director of the National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies, Melbourne, Australia, pointed out that no religious tradition, Islam included, was a fixed, permanent and homogenous entity that had not undergone any transformation since its inception. Rather, he said, religious traditions are like living beings that emerge and grow over time and adapt to different contexts—although, of course, this is not how religious literalists and other ‘fundamentalists’ imagine them to be. In this regard, he added, in today’s context, where communities are in closer proximity than ever before, it was imperative for Muslims to develop new, and more positive, understandings of people of other faiths and their belief systems and of relations with them. A marked feature of today’s global context was the notion of common and equal citizenship, which is something entirely new. This, he said, necessitated the revision of several traditional Muslim understandings of the ‘other’, because these were rooted in a context of fundamental inequality between Muslims and other people. Mere tolerance of other faiths and their followers would no longer suffice, for it was not based on a positive value for engaging with the religious ‘other’. Rather, he argued, Muslims need to move beyond, to accept the ‘other’ and to champion religious pluralism based on common citizenship, while at the same time recognizing and respecting cultural differences. Yet, he said, multiculturalism has its clear limits, for, if stretched too far, it could lead to religious ghettoisation. It should be tempered, he suggested, with active engagement with people of other faiths for the common good.
Multiculturalism must not mean or lead to freezing communities into separate boxes or reifying religious traditions, argued Reuven Firestone, a trained Rabbi, who heads a centre for Jewish-Muslim Understanding in the USA. It must go beyond respecting cultural and religious differences to actively learning from and sharing with people of different faiths and cultures. This, he said, was precisely what the early Muslim Arabs did, because of which they were able to make marvelous strides in various fields of human activity. One of the major reasons for the later decline of Arab-Muslim civilization, he pointed out, was the shift to more exclusivist notions of the religious ‘other’ that did not conduce to learning from or interacting with them.
Lived Islam is a diverse discursive tradition, understood and expressed in diverse forms, and thus offers a variety of responses to, and interpretations of, other faiths and their adherents and relations with them, stressed the noted Indonesian scholar Azyumardi Azra, Professor at the Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta. These responses ranged from sternly exclusivist and hostile to open and inclusive, each of which presented itself as authoritatively and authentically ‘Islamic’. Critiquing exclusivist and hostile notions of the other in Muslim thought was a necessary task, Azra said, and there were tools available within the broader Islamic tradition, such as tajdid (renewal) and islah (reform) that could be used for this, although not in the strictly literalist manner as advocated by self-styled Salafis and the Wahhabis. This task needed to go along with attempts to ‘indigenise’ Islam to make it part of, and responsive to, local cultures instead of appearing to be a foreign, specifically Arab, cultural import. What he was probably hinting at was the tendency of Muslims to conflate Islam with Arabic language and culture. In this way, he opined, Muslims would be able to understand and live their faith in a manner suitable to the local cultural context that they shared with people of other religions and thus be culturally more integrated with them. Alongside this task of the ‘indigenisation’ of Islam in local cultures what was also required, Azra suggested, was for Muslim scholars to promote the Quranic concept of Muslims as the median or balanced community (ummatan wasatan), followers of the ‘middle path’. This ‘wasatiya Islam’, as Azra termed it, could serve as a powerful counter to Muslim or ‘Islamic’ exclusivism and supremacy.
The thrust of Tariq Ramadan’s presentation was a plea for rethinking fundamental categories in both secular as well as Muslim/Islamic thought. Dwelling on the latter, he argued that ‘reform’ (for which he used the terms islah and ihya) in Muslim/Islamic thought on the question of the religious ‘other’ is an indispensable necessity, although many might balk at this. While the Islamic texts could not be changed or ‘reformed’, what could, he said, were our understandings of them on certain matters. This is because religious understandings are a human product and so can change in response to changing social and historical contexts. Religious traditions, he noted, are a ‘moving reality’ and one’s understanding of one’s tradition is—or should be—also dynamic and open to being transformed with shifts in time and context. The ‘reform’ in Muslim thought with regard to the religious ‘other’ and the fact of religious pluralism that Ramadan suggested was, he said, not to adapt to standards set by others or to be accepted by them but, rather, to make the world a better place for all—for Muslims and for others. Hence, he clarified, what he was advocating was what he called ‘transformational reform’, which was distinct from ‘adaptational reform’. Arguing against those who see the shariah as a closed, fixed body of laws incapable of change and reform, he appealed for a fundamental reform in fiqh rules about people of other faiths and religious pluralism and a concomitant shift in focus in Islamic thought from the rules of fiqh to the basic ‘principles of fiqh’ (usul al-fiqh), through which more appropriate and positive fiqh rules could be formulated to promote inter-community dialogue and solidarity in accordance with today’s context of religious pluralism.
Echoing what several speakers before him had stressed, Ramadan called for the Islamic texts to be read in context and for what he called a new ‘Islamic applied ethics’ that would conduce to better relations between Muslims and others. Again, like numerous other speakers, he indicated the crucial need to critique and challenge certain classical ‘Islamic’ definitions and terms (most notably, the concept of the dars) that, he argued, were a product of a historical context that no longer exists and that militate against better relations with others. He also suggested that Muslims needed to broaden their imagination of what was ‘Islamic’: for instance, a just, egalitarian law could not be branded as ‘un-Islamic’ or ‘anti-shariah’ simply because it was formulated by a non-Muslim political authority. If it was indeed just and egalitarian, it must also be regarded as in accordance with the shariah or even as part of it.
A similar widening of approach and perspective was needed, Ramadan suggested, in Muslims’ understanding of the notion of the ummah. The Prophet Muhammad, he noted, included the Jews of Medina as part of the same ummah as the Muslims, thus suggesting that widely-held Muslim understandings of the notion were restrictive and narrow in a manner not warranted by the Prophet’s own practice. Likewise, he said, Muslims needed to broaden their horizons and be concerned not only for and about themselves but, indeed, for the whole of humankind. ‘Muslims will be respected by others if they contribute and work for not just themselves but for others as well, working for and with them, for siding with the poor, for struggling for freedom and justice for all,’ he very rightly remarked.
For me, the highlight of the conference was hearing the arrestingly charismatic Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, head of the New York-based Cordoba Initiative, speak. The soft-spoken but extremely articulate Egyptian-born and Britain-educated Imam has been in the forefront of efforts to promote dialogue between people of different faiths, inspired by a truly universalistic—and, so, to me, powerfully attractive—understanding of religion. He began by pointing out that Muslims are today perceived as a ‘problem’ the world over. Owing to the actions of self-styled Islamists, Islam is now regarded by many as a security threat. This perception, he said, cannot be denied or wished away simply through apologetic exercises. Across the world, Muslim groups, using the vocabulary of Islam, have spearheaded violent political movements in the name of Islam. This is why, he said, many non-Muslims perceive Islam to be synonymous with violence and even terror. This undeniable fact, he went on, is a challenge to Muslims concerned about their faith, who must act to rescue it from terrorists who use it to give it a bad name.
The Imam debunked certain key myths that many Muslims, wedded to a narrow, communal understanding of Islam, zealously uphold. He pointed out that the Quran addresses itself not to Muslims as a communal group, but, rather to what it calls ‘believers’ or muminun. And this, he argued, is what the companions of the Prophet Muhammad saw themselves as. Based on his interpretation of certain key Quranic verses, the Imam pointed out that the category of muminun was not limited to those who call themselves by the Arabic term ‘Muslim’, and who generally construe the term as referring to a particular community. Rather, he persuasively argued, the muminun that the Quran talks about, for which any other suitable term could be used in other languages, included everyone, no matter what rituals he followed, what language he worshipped in, or whatever name he called himself by, who believed in the one God and in divine accountability after death and practiced good. This, he said, was the basic religion taught by all the prophets of God. Various prophets might have had their own methods of prayer and rituals, but these should be seen not as separate religions or as the bases of separate communities. Rather, they were more like different schools of thought or, in Arabic, mazhabs, of the same religion, or different sunnahs or paths. ‘The various prophets had different signatures, but they shared the same message’, he explained. All the prophets, the Quran says, were of the same status, and, critiquing Muslim claims to supremacy, he argued that nowhere does the Quran declare the Prophet Muhammad to have been the best among them or the most superior—contrary to what many Muslims contend. In actual fact, he pointed out, the Quran warns people not to make any distinction between the prophets. To imagine that the ‘believers’, in the Quranic sense, referred to a particular community that practiced a particular set of rituals in a particular language, as most Muslims do, was, the Imam argued, not at all in accordance with what the Quran says.
The universalistic understanding of religion and the notion of ‘believer’ that he argued the Quran actually preached (which is in marked contrast to how many of those who call themselves ‘Muslims’ understand them), the Imam suggested, was a powerful counter to the communalistic interpretations of Islam that have been, and still are, powerfully dominant and that inherently conduce to conflict. It was, he contended, also a firm basis to bring together the muminun in different communities, no matter what communal label they defined themselves with, to work together for a better world.
A host of other speakers addressed the two-day conference, which was easily one of the most engaging and enriching that I have attended so far.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Social Transformation in Islam: Reform or Revolution?
By Maulana Waris Mazhari
A crucial issue that needs careful deliberation and clarification is: What is the appropriate method for social transformation according to the principles and teachings of Islam and the model of the Prophet Muhammad? Contemporary Islamic movements display considerable confusion in this regard. They believe that Islam aims at the extermination of falsehood and that it can, in no way, tolerate it. They believe that tolerating falsehood or remaining silent on it is tantamount to betraying the Islamic mission. This is why many of these movements regard revolution as the most important and potent method of social transformation. Accordingly, revolution is at the top of their agenda, or so they claim.
However, it is a bitter truth, and one that activists involved in Islamic groups are themselves increasingly beginning to realize, that the policies and activities of ‘revolutionary’ or radical Islamist groups are, far from advancing the cause of Islam, actually undermining it by creating increasingly insurmountable hurdles in its path. Despite the efforts of radical or self-styled ‘revolutionary’ Islamist groups over the last 70 to 80 years, no such revolution has taken place in the Sunni world. On the contrary, in most cases the radical activities of such ‘revolutionary’ groups and movements have had precisely the opposite results, proving to be entirely counter-productive. A good example is that of the Ikhwan ul-Muslimun or ‘Muslim Brethren’ in Egypt, which participated in the downfall of the regime of King Faruq, only to be later brutally crushed by the regime of Jamaluddin Abdul Nasser, whom it helped to come to power. One can cite numerous more such instances from other parts of the world.
The Islamic ‘revolution’ in Iran was marked by the deep impact of Shia theology. With the help of the doctrine of the wilayat al-faqih or the ‘guardianship of the jurist’, which was developed by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian Shia ulema managed to acquire some sort of theocratic power. Due to major differences in outlook and theology between the Sunni and Shia understandings of Islam, this is not possible in the Sunni world. Nor, to my mind, is this in accordance with the basic principles of Islam. It is undoubtedly true that many Muslims in the Sunni world, particularly among the youth, were indeed inspired by the Iranian ‘revolution’. For its part, the new Iranian regime sought to export its ‘revolution’ to the Sunni world. However, nothing much actually came of this in practical terms, although this certainly emboldened Islamist groups while leading to heightened fears in the West over what was described as ‘the opening of the bottle containing the Islamic genie’, which was regarded as a threat to the West.
Coming to the question of whether or not revolution is the way prescribed in Islam for social transformation, it is crucial to understand what the term ‘revolution’ actually means. What, in reality, are the features of revolution? What are, or should be, its aims and objectives? Without clarifying these complex issues, one cannot discuss the appropriate method of social transformation in Islam.
The fact of the matter is that nowhere do the Quran and the Hadith use any word that connotes revolution. Nor do they advocate any concept of revolutionary transformation of society in the sense that contemporary Islamist movements understand it. The term ‘revolution’ as understood today connotes a struggle that aims fundamentally at the total transformation of the bases of governance and society. It suggests a complete and drastic change. The model for such change in modern times are the communist revolutions in countries such as Russia and China. Communism regards revolution as the means for social change. In contrast, and contrary to what radical or ‘revolutionary’ Islamist ideologues argue, the basis and means for social change in Islam is reform (islah), not revolution.
There are fundamental differences, indeed contradictions, between the reformist and revolutionary paths to social change. The principal objective of revolutionaries is to bring about change at the external level, particularly in the bases of political power, while reformists aim primarily at change at the internal level—in the inner consciousness and behaviour of individuals. While revolution stands for total and sudden change, reform stands for partial and gradual change or, at least, it does not oppose it. Reform is guided by concern and goodwill for others, while, typically, revolutions are fired by feelings of hatred or revenge.
The social change wrought by all the prophets, including the Prophet Muhammad, were instances of reform, rather than radicalism or revolution. Their reformist efforts aimed primarily at the transformation of the inner consciousness, beliefs and behaviour of individuals through education, moral instruction and purification. This is what the Quran regards as the aim behind God sending to humankind a long chain of prophets. As the Quran puts it, referring to the Prophet Muhammad:
‘Allah did confer a big favour on the believers when He sent among them a Messenger from among themselves, rehearsing unto them the signs of Allah, purifying them, and instructing them in scripture and wisdom, while, before that, they had been in manifest error’ (3:164).
The many prophets sent by God to guide humankind, the last of who was the Prophet Muhammad, did not make regime change or the capture of political power their aim. Rather, their primary focus was the reform of individuals, who, when suitably reformed, could form a society inspired to follow God’s teachings. Only then could a government that would rule according to the teachings of Islam. The Prophet Muhammad is said to have declared, ‘Those who rule over you will be just as you are’ (kama ta kununa kazalika yoammaru aleikum). In other words, people get the government or rulers they deserve, because the representatives of people emerge from and are chosen from among them. This clearly indicates that it is only through gradual and sustained reform at the level of individuals that society, and, then, the system of governance can be reformed. This is the natural system of bringing about social transformation.
Over the last 80-odd years, Islamist movements have never ceased from raising emotionally-driven slogans of what they call ‘Islamic Revolution’. Because they ignored the natural method of social transformation, the slogans raised by these movements remained precisely that—mere slogans that could not be actualized. Consequently, today many Muslims are growing weary of such clichéd slogans, and are losing faith in the claims of those who never tire of mouthing them.
In today’s world, political and radical or revolutionary interpretations of Islam are proving to be a major source of chaos, conflict and strife, or what the Quran terms fitna. The major ideologue of this politically-oriented version of Islam was an Indian (who later migrated to Pakistan), Maulana Syed Abul ‘Ala Maududi, founder of the Islamist Jama‘at-e Islami. In his hugely influential, and, at the same time, enormously controversial book Islami Nizam-e Zindagi Aur Uske Buniyadi Tasavvurat (‘The Islamic Way of Life and its Basic Conceptions’), Maududi projected Islam as a revolutionary ideology and the Muslim ummah as a revolutionary party. On this basis, he called for Muslims to struggle for what he termed as ‘Islamic Revolution’ throughout the world. He considered all the prophets of God to have been revolutionary political leaders. If one were to take this obviously erroneous claim to be true, one would have to admit that, with a very few exceptions, none of the prophets were successful in their mission because they were not accepted as political leaders by their people, and nor were they able to establish Islamic political rule. Obviously, no sensible Muslim can believe that the prophets were failures and that they were unable to do what God had sent them to the world to accomplish.
To claim, as Maududi does, that Muslims are ‘not a band of preachers and missionaries, but, rather, a party of soldiers of God’ is to betray ignorance, and, indeed, transgression of, the basic truths of Islam. The major difference between the truly Islamic method of social transformation, as followed by the prophets, and the radical method of present-day politically-oriented Islamist movements is that the former is gradual and aims at reforms from below, from the individual to the social and then to the political plane, while the latter is radical and seeks to impose change in individuals and in the society from above, using political power for this purpose. The latter method is unnatural, unrealistic and impracticable, and inevitably results in strife and much bloodshed and destruction. That, indeed, is the fate of any movement that uses unnatural methods, no matter how noble its aims may be. It is also apparent that any revolution wrought by such means can never be long-lasting. Revolutions are generally sooner or later subverted, ironically often by those who played key roles in bringing them about in the first place.
All this clearly suggests that Islamic movements and groups that are engaged in, or so they claim, in ‘revolutionary’ action to capture power must seriously revisit their methods and their ideology. Such radicalism is proving, as the case of Pakistan today, for instance, so tragically shows, to be entirely counter-productive for Islam and its adherents. If at all any ‘revolution’ occurs as a result of the activities of these ‘revolutionary’ self-styled Islamist groups, the true lovers of Islam will, one can be sure, desperately seek safety from it and from ‘political Islam’, an obvious parody of authentic Islam, on which it would be based.
(Translated from Urdu by Yoginder Sikand/Noor Mohammad Sikand)
----------
Maulana Waris Mazhari is the editor of the New Delhi-based monthly Tarjuman Dar ul-Uloom, the official organ of the Graduates’ Association of the Deoband madrasa. He can be contacted on w.mazhari@gmail.com
Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion at the National Law School, Bangalore.
A crucial issue that needs careful deliberation and clarification is: What is the appropriate method for social transformation according to the principles and teachings of Islam and the model of the Prophet Muhammad? Contemporary Islamic movements display considerable confusion in this regard. They believe that Islam aims at the extermination of falsehood and that it can, in no way, tolerate it. They believe that tolerating falsehood or remaining silent on it is tantamount to betraying the Islamic mission. This is why many of these movements regard revolution as the most important and potent method of social transformation. Accordingly, revolution is at the top of their agenda, or so they claim.
However, it is a bitter truth, and one that activists involved in Islamic groups are themselves increasingly beginning to realize, that the policies and activities of ‘revolutionary’ or radical Islamist groups are, far from advancing the cause of Islam, actually undermining it by creating increasingly insurmountable hurdles in its path. Despite the efforts of radical or self-styled ‘revolutionary’ Islamist groups over the last 70 to 80 years, no such revolution has taken place in the Sunni world. On the contrary, in most cases the radical activities of such ‘revolutionary’ groups and movements have had precisely the opposite results, proving to be entirely counter-productive. A good example is that of the Ikhwan ul-Muslimun or ‘Muslim Brethren’ in Egypt, which participated in the downfall of the regime of King Faruq, only to be later brutally crushed by the regime of Jamaluddin Abdul Nasser, whom it helped to come to power. One can cite numerous more such instances from other parts of the world.
The Islamic ‘revolution’ in Iran was marked by the deep impact of Shia theology. With the help of the doctrine of the wilayat al-faqih or the ‘guardianship of the jurist’, which was developed by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian Shia ulema managed to acquire some sort of theocratic power. Due to major differences in outlook and theology between the Sunni and Shia understandings of Islam, this is not possible in the Sunni world. Nor, to my mind, is this in accordance with the basic principles of Islam. It is undoubtedly true that many Muslims in the Sunni world, particularly among the youth, were indeed inspired by the Iranian ‘revolution’. For its part, the new Iranian regime sought to export its ‘revolution’ to the Sunni world. However, nothing much actually came of this in practical terms, although this certainly emboldened Islamist groups while leading to heightened fears in the West over what was described as ‘the opening of the bottle containing the Islamic genie’, which was regarded as a threat to the West.
Coming to the question of whether or not revolution is the way prescribed in Islam for social transformation, it is crucial to understand what the term ‘revolution’ actually means. What, in reality, are the features of revolution? What are, or should be, its aims and objectives? Without clarifying these complex issues, one cannot discuss the appropriate method of social transformation in Islam.
The fact of the matter is that nowhere do the Quran and the Hadith use any word that connotes revolution. Nor do they advocate any concept of revolutionary transformation of society in the sense that contemporary Islamist movements understand it. The term ‘revolution’ as understood today connotes a struggle that aims fundamentally at the total transformation of the bases of governance and society. It suggests a complete and drastic change. The model for such change in modern times are the communist revolutions in countries such as Russia and China. Communism regards revolution as the means for social change. In contrast, and contrary to what radical or ‘revolutionary’ Islamist ideologues argue, the basis and means for social change in Islam is reform (islah), not revolution.
There are fundamental differences, indeed contradictions, between the reformist and revolutionary paths to social change. The principal objective of revolutionaries is to bring about change at the external level, particularly in the bases of political power, while reformists aim primarily at change at the internal level—in the inner consciousness and behaviour of individuals. While revolution stands for total and sudden change, reform stands for partial and gradual change or, at least, it does not oppose it. Reform is guided by concern and goodwill for others, while, typically, revolutions are fired by feelings of hatred or revenge.
The social change wrought by all the prophets, including the Prophet Muhammad, were instances of reform, rather than radicalism or revolution. Their reformist efforts aimed primarily at the transformation of the inner consciousness, beliefs and behaviour of individuals through education, moral instruction and purification. This is what the Quran regards as the aim behind God sending to humankind a long chain of prophets. As the Quran puts it, referring to the Prophet Muhammad:
‘Allah did confer a big favour on the believers when He sent among them a Messenger from among themselves, rehearsing unto them the signs of Allah, purifying them, and instructing them in scripture and wisdom, while, before that, they had been in manifest error’ (3:164).
The many prophets sent by God to guide humankind, the last of who was the Prophet Muhammad, did not make regime change or the capture of political power their aim. Rather, their primary focus was the reform of individuals, who, when suitably reformed, could form a society inspired to follow God’s teachings. Only then could a government that would rule according to the teachings of Islam. The Prophet Muhammad is said to have declared, ‘Those who rule over you will be just as you are’ (kama ta kununa kazalika yoammaru aleikum). In other words, people get the government or rulers they deserve, because the representatives of people emerge from and are chosen from among them. This clearly indicates that it is only through gradual and sustained reform at the level of individuals that society, and, then, the system of governance can be reformed. This is the natural system of bringing about social transformation.
Over the last 80-odd years, Islamist movements have never ceased from raising emotionally-driven slogans of what they call ‘Islamic Revolution’. Because they ignored the natural method of social transformation, the slogans raised by these movements remained precisely that—mere slogans that could not be actualized. Consequently, today many Muslims are growing weary of such clichéd slogans, and are losing faith in the claims of those who never tire of mouthing them.
In today’s world, political and radical or revolutionary interpretations of Islam are proving to be a major source of chaos, conflict and strife, or what the Quran terms fitna. The major ideologue of this politically-oriented version of Islam was an Indian (who later migrated to Pakistan), Maulana Syed Abul ‘Ala Maududi, founder of the Islamist Jama‘at-e Islami. In his hugely influential, and, at the same time, enormously controversial book Islami Nizam-e Zindagi Aur Uske Buniyadi Tasavvurat (‘The Islamic Way of Life and its Basic Conceptions’), Maududi projected Islam as a revolutionary ideology and the Muslim ummah as a revolutionary party. On this basis, he called for Muslims to struggle for what he termed as ‘Islamic Revolution’ throughout the world. He considered all the prophets of God to have been revolutionary political leaders. If one were to take this obviously erroneous claim to be true, one would have to admit that, with a very few exceptions, none of the prophets were successful in their mission because they were not accepted as political leaders by their people, and nor were they able to establish Islamic political rule. Obviously, no sensible Muslim can believe that the prophets were failures and that they were unable to do what God had sent them to the world to accomplish.
To claim, as Maududi does, that Muslims are ‘not a band of preachers and missionaries, but, rather, a party of soldiers of God’ is to betray ignorance, and, indeed, transgression of, the basic truths of Islam. The major difference between the truly Islamic method of social transformation, as followed by the prophets, and the radical method of present-day politically-oriented Islamist movements is that the former is gradual and aims at reforms from below, from the individual to the social and then to the political plane, while the latter is radical and seeks to impose change in individuals and in the society from above, using political power for this purpose. The latter method is unnatural, unrealistic and impracticable, and inevitably results in strife and much bloodshed and destruction. That, indeed, is the fate of any movement that uses unnatural methods, no matter how noble its aims may be. It is also apparent that any revolution wrought by such means can never be long-lasting. Revolutions are generally sooner or later subverted, ironically often by those who played key roles in bringing them about in the first place.
All this clearly suggests that Islamic movements and groups that are engaged in, or so they claim, in ‘revolutionary’ action to capture power must seriously revisit their methods and their ideology. Such radicalism is proving, as the case of Pakistan today, for instance, so tragically shows, to be entirely counter-productive for Islam and its adherents. If at all any ‘revolution’ occurs as a result of the activities of these ‘revolutionary’ self-styled Islamist groups, the true lovers of Islam will, one can be sure, desperately seek safety from it and from ‘political Islam’, an obvious parody of authentic Islam, on which it would be based.
(Translated from Urdu by Yoginder Sikand/Noor Mohammad Sikand)
----------
Maulana Waris Mazhari is the editor of the New Delhi-based monthly Tarjuman Dar ul-Uloom, the official organ of the Graduates’ Association of the Deoband madrasa. He can be contacted on w.mazhari@gmail.com
Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion at the National Law School, Bangalore.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
The Myth of Moderate Islam and Idealism
by Vincenzo Oliveti
(author of Terror’s Source: The Ideology of Wahabi-Salafism and its Consequences)
19 September 2008
This article first appeared in ISLAMICA Magazine.
Patrick Sookhdeo’s article (July 30, 2005) in London’s The Spectator, “The Myth of a Moderate Islam” reflects a dangerous trend in the war on terror. Under the guise of informing Westerners about Islam, he is in fact spreading the very same disinformation that anti-Islamic polemics have been based upon for over 1,000 years. This plays directly into the hands of Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and others, for it encourages the “clash of civilizations” they so appallingly desire. It is indeed of the utmost importance that we learn more about Islam and fight the scourge of extremism with all the tools possible. But Sookhdeo and those like him corrupt this process, seeking to advance their own agenda by turning the war on terror into an ideological war against Islam.
Muslim Violence
Sookhdeo’s bias is evident from the outset. He argues that terrorists truly represent Islam, writing: “If they say they do it in the name of Islam, we must believe them. Is it not the height of illiberalism and arrogance to deny them the right to define themselves?” The remainder of the essay, however, is an extensive effort to deny other Muslims the right to define themselves by rejecting extremist interpretations of Islam. In fact, less than 5% of Muslims could be classified as fundamentalist in outlook, and of that 5%, less than 0.01% have shown any tendency toward enacting terrorism or “religious violence”. It is thus “the height of illiberalism” to define as terrorists over 1.3 billion Muslims who have nothing to do with “religious violence” because of the misdeeds of a fringe minority of 0.005%. At most, one in every 200,000 Muslims can be accused of terrorism. That is to say there are a maximum of about 65,000 terrorists worldwide — roughly the same figure as the number of murderers on the loose in the U.S. alone, with over 20,000 homicides a year and a population of only 300 million.
Sookhdeo claims that Muslims “must with honesty recognize the violence that has existed in their history.” However, given that the majority of books that record the transgressions of Muslims have been written by Muslims, it is difficult to argue that Muslims have chosen en masse to ignore the atrocities of their past. Of course, there are Muslims who deny many parts of this past, just as there are British people who still deny the atrocities of colonialism; Americans who deny the massacre of the Native Americans; and Germans who deny the Holocaust of 6 million Jews. But the fact remains that Christian civilization has given rise to many more atrocities than has Islamic civilization, even relative to its greater population and longer age.
Christian Violence
Nowhere in Islamic history can one find a doctrine similar to Saint Augustine’s cognite intrare (”lead them in” — i.e. “force them to convert”). In fact the Qur’an says the exact opposite: “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256). Augustine’s frightening idea that all must be compelled to “conform” to the “true Christian faith” has unleashed centuries of unparalleled bloodshed.
Indeed, Christians have suffered more under the rule of Christian civilization than under pre-Christian Roman rule or any other rule in history. Millions were tortured and slaughtered in the name of Christianity during the periods of the Arian, Donatist and Albigensian heresies, to say nothing of the various Inquisitions, or the Crusades, when the European armies were saying, as they slaughtered both Christian and Muslim Arabs: “Kill them all, God will know his own.” Needless to say, these transgressions — and indeed all the transgressions of Christians throughout the ages — have absolutely nothing to do with Jesus Christ and or even the New Testament as such. Indeed, no Muslim by definition would ever or will ever blame this on Jesus Christ (the Word made Flesh, for Christians and Muslims). So how is it that Sookhdeo blames Muslim transgressions (even though far less than “Christian” ones) on the Qur’an (the Word made Book, for Muslims)?
By no means was such indiscriminate violence limited to Europe’s “Dark Ages” or to one period of Christian history. The Reformation and Counter Reformation took inter- Christian slaughter to new extremes; two thirds of the Christian population of Europe being slaughtered during this time. Then there were (among many others wars, pogroms, revolutions and genocides) the Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815); the African slave trade that claimed the lives of 10 million; and the Colonial Conquests. Estimates for the number of Native Americans slaughtered by the Europeans in North, Central and South America run as high as 20 million within three generations. Despite the ravages of Europe’s violent past, in the 20th century, Western Civilization took warfare to new extremes. A conservative estimate puts the total number of brutal deaths in the 20 th century at more than 250 million. Of these, Muslims are responsible for less than 10 million deaths. Christians, or those coming from Christian backgrounds account for more than 200 million of these! The greatest death totals come from World War I (about 20 million, at least 90% of which were inflicted by “Christians”) and World War II (90 million, at least 50% of which were inflicted by “Christians,” the majority of the rest occurring in the Far East). Given this grim history, it appears that we Europeans must all come to grips with the fact that Islamic civilization has actually been incomparably less brutal than Christian civilization. Did the Holocaust of over 6 million Jews occur out of the background of a Muslim Civilization?
In the 20th century alone, Western and/or Christian powers have been responsible for at least twenty times more deaths than have Muslim powers. In this most brutal of centuries, we created incomparably more civilian casualties than have Muslims in the whole of Islamic history. This continues even in our day — witness the slaughter of 900,000 Rwandans in 1994 in a population that was over 90% Christian; or the genocide of over 300,000 Muslims and systematic rape of over 100,000 Muslim women by Christian Serbs in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. The horrible truth is that, numerically and statistically speaking, Christian Civilization is the bloodiest and most violent of all civilizations in all of history, and is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths. The production and use of nuclear weapons alone should be enough to make the West stand in shame before the rest of the world. America created nuclear weapons. America is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons, and Western countries strive to maintain a monopoly over them. As the record stands, we have no moral grounds for objecting to the acquisition of such weapons until we prove willing to forfeit them entirely.
It should also be mentioned that although Islam has the concept of legitimate war in self-defense (as does Christianity, and even Buddhism), nowhere in Islamic culture (or in other cultures that survive today) is there latent the idealization, and perhaps idolization, of violence that exists in Western Culture. Westerners think of themselves as peaceful, but in fact the gentleness and sublimity of the New Testament, and the peace-loving nature of the principles of democracy, are scarcely reflected in Western popular culture. Rather, the entire inclination of popular culture — Hollywood movies, Western television, video games, popular music and sports entertainment — is to glorify and inculcate violence. Accordingly, the relative rates of murder (especially random and serial murder) are higher in the Western World (particularly in the U.S., but even in Europe, taken as a whole) than they are in the Islamic world in counties that are not suffering civil wars, and this is true despite the much greater wealth of the West. So has Sookhdeo ever read the following words?:
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)
The Qur’an and the Use of Force
Like most anti-Islamic polemics, the rest of Sookhdeo’s article is a mix of fact and fiction. For example, he argues that many of the Qur’anic verses that advocate peace were abrogated by later verses. It is true that many Muslim scholars claim later verses abrogate earlier verses, but the extent of abrogation is greatly debated. Some scholars say that only five verses have ever been abrogated. Some say that over 150 have been abrogated. Sookhdeo’s claim that “wherever contradictions are found, the later-dated text abrogates the earlier one” is thus a gross simplification. To claim that all of the peaceful verses are earlier revelations that have been abrogated by later militant verses is simply false. For example, verses revealed in the last two years of Muhammad’s mission enjoin Muslims to not seek vengeance against those who had driven them from their homes:
Let not the hatred of the people — because they hindered you from the Sacred Mosque — incite you to transgress. Help one another in goodness and reverence, and do not help one another in sin and aggression”(Qur’an 5:2).
O ye who believe, be upright for God witnesses injustice; and let not hatred of a people cause you to be unjust. Be just — that is closer to piety” (Qur’an 5:8).
One can hardly imagine a more emphatic message of justice, forgiveness and reconciliation.
Moreover, many highly qualified Muslim scholars have cited the earlier verses advocating peace to dissuade young Muslims from answering the call of the extremists. Would Sookhdeo prefer that these young Muslims listen to those who explain these verses away by applying his truncated version of abrogation?
Significantly enough, like extremist interpreters of Islam, Sookhdeo misrepresents Qur’anic verses by citing them out of context. He claims that Qu’ranic verses 8:59-60 condone terrorism. Verse 8:60 does indeed condone fighting one’s enemies, but it is followed by verse 8:61: “And if they incline unto peace then incline unto it” — another later revelation. In this context, verse 8:60 is advocating that one not take the course of passivism when threatened by an enemy, but 8:61 then limits the application. This hardly constitutes terrorism. Perhaps if Sookhdeo knew Arabic properly, he would have the capacity to read the Qur’an more clearly. But he does not. This makes it difficult to accept him as an authority on Islamic teachings, whatever may be his post or title.
Sookhdeo goes on to claim that one can pick between Qur’anic verses that support violence and those that support peace. This is true, but one would be hard pressed to demonstrate that the Qur’an condones violence more than the Old Testament (say, for example, the Book of Leviticus or the Book of Joshua). And if we say that the Qur’an condones violence, what are we to think of the passages of the Bible that directly command slaughter and genocide? In Numbers 31:17 Moses says (of the Midianite captives, whose menfolk the Israelites have already slaughtered): “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and every woman who has known a man intimately.” I Samuel 15:1-9 tells the story of the Prophet Samuel commanding King Saul to eradicate the Amalekites as follows: “Slay both men and women, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”
Such extremes were forbidden by the Prophet Muhammad who ordered his community: “Fight in the way of God against those who disbelieve in God! Do not act brutally! Do not exceed the proper bounds! Do not mutilate! Do not kill children and hermits! And likewise, “Attack in the Name of God, but do not revert to treachery; do not kill a child; neither kill a woman; do not wish to confront the enemy.”
To claim that the warfare advocated in some Qur’anic verses is a justification for wanton acts of violence fails to acknowledge that classical interpretations have always limited the scope of such verses. For example, a verse that is often misinterpreted in the modern era is 2:191-92:
Slay the polytheists wherever you find them, and capture them and blockade them, and watch for them at every lookout. But if they repent and establish the prayer and give alms, then let them go their way.
On the one hand, extremists employ this verse to sanction shedding innocent blood. On the other hand, it is employed by non-Muslim polemicists to portray the Qur’an as a bellicose declaration of perpetual warfare. But according to the classical Islamic tradition, this verse cannot be taken as a carte blanche to fight non-Muslims. It can only be applied to the specific polytheists who opposed the early Muslim community and threatened the very survival of Islam. As one authoritative jurisprudent Qadi Abu Bakr Ibn Al-‘Arabi of the 11th - 12th century CE writes:
This verse is general regarding the polytheists, but is restricted by the Prophet’s prohibition of the killing of women, children, religious adherents, and non-combatants. But understood also are those who do not fight you nor are preparing to fight you or harm you. The verse actually means, “Slay the polytheists who are attempting to slay you.”
Such interpretations could be cited ad infinitum. They clearly demonstrate that Sookhdeo’s equation of “radical Muslims” with “medieval jurists” who claim that “Islam is war” is not only unfounded, but an utter distortion. Either Sookhdeo is not qualified to analyze the classical Islamic tradition and compare it to modern deviations, or he is intentionally distorting Islamic teachings. Either way, he proves himself to be completely unreliable.
Dubious Scholarship
Sookhdeo’s dubious scholarship is on display throughout this article, particularly when he uses the hackneyed distinction between Dar al-Islam (the abode of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (the abode of war) to argue that Muslims accept nothing but war or triumph. These are important classical terms, but Muslim scholars also wrote of many other abodes between them. Some classifications include three abodes, some five, and some seven. In the modern era, Europe and America have been regarded by the vast majority of Muslim scholars as the Dar al-Sulh, or “the abode of treaty.” This means that a Muslim can engage with this world on many levels and should abide by the laws of the land if he or she chooses to live there or to visit. Using this distinction, Muslim scholars have even declared that Muslims can serve in the U.S. Army, even when combating other Muslim countries. Only those who seek conflict continue to misinform the public by limiting the world to Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb.
Islamic Scholarship
Sookhdeo’s miscomprehension is also revealed when he discusses the recent conference of Islamic scholars in Jordan, which issued a final declaration that opposed the practice of calling other Muslims non-believers and clarified the qualifications for issuing fatwas. He argues that this has “negated a very helpful fatwa which had been issued in March by the Spanish Islamic scholars declaring Osama bin Laden an apostate.” However, a war of words wherein Muslims begin calling other Muslims unbelievers is precisely what Al-Qaida and other extremists desire. This way they can brand as apostate and kill everyone who disagrees with them. Let us not forget how two days before 9/11, Al-Qaida assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud. This was no mere coincidence; it was a strategic imperative. By removing the most charismatic representative of traditional Islam in Afghanistan, Al-Qaida removed the greatest obstacle to their distortions of Islam, a credible leader who would expose the spurious nature of their claim to represent Islam.
In order to avoid people being killed over even petty faults or sins, classical Islamic law does not allow one to “ex-communicate” another Muslim for sinning nor to declare him or her to be a non-believer. By reaffirming this and removing the possibility of takfir (calling someone an apostate) in our age, King Abdullah’s conference has made the world a safer place. This is true not just for traditional, “moderate” Muslims — the only ones in fact who can effectively isolate the extremists and thus protect non-Muslims — but also for others, such as Jews and Christians whom the Qur’an (and the greatest classical scholars of Islam, such as the famous al-Ghazali) regards as “fellow believers.” Sookhdeo desires to keep this “door” open so that Muslims he does not like can be “ex-communicated.” He wants to keep this “sword” — in effect — unsheathed, completely forgetting that all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword (Matthew 26:52).
Sookhdeo further displays a complete lack of understanding of Islamic law when he asks: “Could not the King reconvene his conference and ask them to issue a fatwa banning violence against non-Muslims also?” In fact this is exactly what did happen by the scholars declaring that the fatwas issued in support of wanton violence are illegitimate. For everyone who commits an act of terrorism in the name of Islam attempts to first justify that act through the issuance — and misuse — of a fatwa, and no one commits terrorist acts without being convinced that terrorism is justified.
The conference reaffirmed that all fatwas must necessarily be bound by a triple system of internal “checks and balances”: all those issuing fatwas must have certain, stringent personal and educational credentials; they must all follow the methodology of the eight Madhahib or tradional schools of Islamic jurisprudence; and no fatwa may go outside the bounds of what the traditional Madhahib allow—precisely what the extremist fatwa s attempt to do. The conference assembled over 180 major scholars from 45 countries, and garnered 17 major fatwas from the greatest Islamic Authorities in the world (including the Sheikh Al-Azhar, Ayatollah Sistani, and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qardawi) to declare this. The conference thus not only de-legitimized the extremists de jure, but, to quote Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek (July 18,2005), constituted “a frontal attack on Al-Qaida’s theological methods.” This is surely a vital tool in the war against extremism, and so the King and his conference are very much to be commended.
Eradicating Extremism
Isolating and eradicating extremists does not, however, appear to be Sookhdeo’s agenda. Rather he wishes to misrepresent the Qur’an, history, and contemporary Muslims in order to substantiate his own claim that terrorism and extremism are inherent to Islam. Following this approach is exactly how we will lose the war on terrorism. The true war is the war of ideas.
The lynch-pin in the arguments of Bin Laden, Zarqawi and others is that they think they represent Islam. Traditional Muslim scholars from around the world have confirmed that such deviant ideologies and actions violate the very principles of Islam. By working with such scholars we can help them to consolidate the traditional middle ground of Islam and further expose the extremists for being just that. This is the most efficient, most peaceful and most effective weapon in the war against extremist interpretations of Islam. If we do not use it, we will have surrendered the higher ground in the war of ideas. By responding with extremism of another kind, Sookhdeo and those like him allow the extremists to determine the general inter-religious ambiance and thus the course of events. Rather than providing a realistic presentation of the challenges we face and their possible peaceful solutions, they take advantage of the situation to advance their own hidden polemical agenda and prejudices. In doing so they work not only against Muslims and Islam, but against the whole of humanity, Christians included (or perhaps especially). Onward Christian soldiers, Reverend Sookhdeo?
(author of Terror’s Source: The Ideology of Wahabi-Salafism and its Consequences)
19 September 2008
This article first appeared in ISLAMICA Magazine.
Patrick Sookhdeo’s article (July 30, 2005) in London’s The Spectator, “The Myth of a Moderate Islam” reflects a dangerous trend in the war on terror. Under the guise of informing Westerners about Islam, he is in fact spreading the very same disinformation that anti-Islamic polemics have been based upon for over 1,000 years. This plays directly into the hands of Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and others, for it encourages the “clash of civilizations” they so appallingly desire. It is indeed of the utmost importance that we learn more about Islam and fight the scourge of extremism with all the tools possible. But Sookhdeo and those like him corrupt this process, seeking to advance their own agenda by turning the war on terror into an ideological war against Islam.
Muslim Violence
Sookhdeo’s bias is evident from the outset. He argues that terrorists truly represent Islam, writing: “If they say they do it in the name of Islam, we must believe them. Is it not the height of illiberalism and arrogance to deny them the right to define themselves?” The remainder of the essay, however, is an extensive effort to deny other Muslims the right to define themselves by rejecting extremist interpretations of Islam. In fact, less than 5% of Muslims could be classified as fundamentalist in outlook, and of that 5%, less than 0.01% have shown any tendency toward enacting terrorism or “religious violence”. It is thus “the height of illiberalism” to define as terrorists over 1.3 billion Muslims who have nothing to do with “religious violence” because of the misdeeds of a fringe minority of 0.005%. At most, one in every 200,000 Muslims can be accused of terrorism. That is to say there are a maximum of about 65,000 terrorists worldwide — roughly the same figure as the number of murderers on the loose in the U.S. alone, with over 20,000 homicides a year and a population of only 300 million.
Sookhdeo claims that Muslims “must with honesty recognize the violence that has existed in their history.” However, given that the majority of books that record the transgressions of Muslims have been written by Muslims, it is difficult to argue that Muslims have chosen en masse to ignore the atrocities of their past. Of course, there are Muslims who deny many parts of this past, just as there are British people who still deny the atrocities of colonialism; Americans who deny the massacre of the Native Americans; and Germans who deny the Holocaust of 6 million Jews. But the fact remains that Christian civilization has given rise to many more atrocities than has Islamic civilization, even relative to its greater population and longer age.
Christian Violence
Nowhere in Islamic history can one find a doctrine similar to Saint Augustine’s cognite intrare (”lead them in” — i.e. “force them to convert”). In fact the Qur’an says the exact opposite: “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256). Augustine’s frightening idea that all must be compelled to “conform” to the “true Christian faith” has unleashed centuries of unparalleled bloodshed.
Indeed, Christians have suffered more under the rule of Christian civilization than under pre-Christian Roman rule or any other rule in history. Millions were tortured and slaughtered in the name of Christianity during the periods of the Arian, Donatist and Albigensian heresies, to say nothing of the various Inquisitions, or the Crusades, when the European armies were saying, as they slaughtered both Christian and Muslim Arabs: “Kill them all, God will know his own.” Needless to say, these transgressions — and indeed all the transgressions of Christians throughout the ages — have absolutely nothing to do with Jesus Christ and or even the New Testament as such. Indeed, no Muslim by definition would ever or will ever blame this on Jesus Christ (the Word made Flesh, for Christians and Muslims). So how is it that Sookhdeo blames Muslim transgressions (even though far less than “Christian” ones) on the Qur’an (the Word made Book, for Muslims)?
By no means was such indiscriminate violence limited to Europe’s “Dark Ages” or to one period of Christian history. The Reformation and Counter Reformation took inter- Christian slaughter to new extremes; two thirds of the Christian population of Europe being slaughtered during this time. Then there were (among many others wars, pogroms, revolutions and genocides) the Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815); the African slave trade that claimed the lives of 10 million; and the Colonial Conquests. Estimates for the number of Native Americans slaughtered by the Europeans in North, Central and South America run as high as 20 million within three generations. Despite the ravages of Europe’s violent past, in the 20th century, Western Civilization took warfare to new extremes. A conservative estimate puts the total number of brutal deaths in the 20 th century at more than 250 million. Of these, Muslims are responsible for less than 10 million deaths. Christians, or those coming from Christian backgrounds account for more than 200 million of these! The greatest death totals come from World War I (about 20 million, at least 90% of which were inflicted by “Christians”) and World War II (90 million, at least 50% of which were inflicted by “Christians,” the majority of the rest occurring in the Far East). Given this grim history, it appears that we Europeans must all come to grips with the fact that Islamic civilization has actually been incomparably less brutal than Christian civilization. Did the Holocaust of over 6 million Jews occur out of the background of a Muslim Civilization?
In the 20th century alone, Western and/or Christian powers have been responsible for at least twenty times more deaths than have Muslim powers. In this most brutal of centuries, we created incomparably more civilian casualties than have Muslims in the whole of Islamic history. This continues even in our day — witness the slaughter of 900,000 Rwandans in 1994 in a population that was over 90% Christian; or the genocide of over 300,000 Muslims and systematic rape of over 100,000 Muslim women by Christian Serbs in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. The horrible truth is that, numerically and statistically speaking, Christian Civilization is the bloodiest and most violent of all civilizations in all of history, and is responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths. The production and use of nuclear weapons alone should be enough to make the West stand in shame before the rest of the world. America created nuclear weapons. America is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons, and Western countries strive to maintain a monopoly over them. As the record stands, we have no moral grounds for objecting to the acquisition of such weapons until we prove willing to forfeit them entirely.
It should also be mentioned that although Islam has the concept of legitimate war in self-defense (as does Christianity, and even Buddhism), nowhere in Islamic culture (or in other cultures that survive today) is there latent the idealization, and perhaps idolization, of violence that exists in Western Culture. Westerners think of themselves as peaceful, but in fact the gentleness and sublimity of the New Testament, and the peace-loving nature of the principles of democracy, are scarcely reflected in Western popular culture. Rather, the entire inclination of popular culture — Hollywood movies, Western television, video games, popular music and sports entertainment — is to glorify and inculcate violence. Accordingly, the relative rates of murder (especially random and serial murder) are higher in the Western World (particularly in the U.S., but even in Europe, taken as a whole) than they are in the Islamic world in counties that are not suffering civil wars, and this is true despite the much greater wealth of the West. So has Sookhdeo ever read the following words?:
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast the mote out of thy brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)
The Qur’an and the Use of Force
Like most anti-Islamic polemics, the rest of Sookhdeo’s article is a mix of fact and fiction. For example, he argues that many of the Qur’anic verses that advocate peace were abrogated by later verses. It is true that many Muslim scholars claim later verses abrogate earlier verses, but the extent of abrogation is greatly debated. Some scholars say that only five verses have ever been abrogated. Some say that over 150 have been abrogated. Sookhdeo’s claim that “wherever contradictions are found, the later-dated text abrogates the earlier one” is thus a gross simplification. To claim that all of the peaceful verses are earlier revelations that have been abrogated by later militant verses is simply false. For example, verses revealed in the last two years of Muhammad’s mission enjoin Muslims to not seek vengeance against those who had driven them from their homes:
Let not the hatred of the people — because they hindered you from the Sacred Mosque — incite you to transgress. Help one another in goodness and reverence, and do not help one another in sin and aggression”(Qur’an 5:2).
O ye who believe, be upright for God witnesses injustice; and let not hatred of a people cause you to be unjust. Be just — that is closer to piety” (Qur’an 5:8).
One can hardly imagine a more emphatic message of justice, forgiveness and reconciliation.
Moreover, many highly qualified Muslim scholars have cited the earlier verses advocating peace to dissuade young Muslims from answering the call of the extremists. Would Sookhdeo prefer that these young Muslims listen to those who explain these verses away by applying his truncated version of abrogation?
Significantly enough, like extremist interpreters of Islam, Sookhdeo misrepresents Qur’anic verses by citing them out of context. He claims that Qu’ranic verses 8:59-60 condone terrorism. Verse 8:60 does indeed condone fighting one’s enemies, but it is followed by verse 8:61: “And if they incline unto peace then incline unto it” — another later revelation. In this context, verse 8:60 is advocating that one not take the course of passivism when threatened by an enemy, but 8:61 then limits the application. This hardly constitutes terrorism. Perhaps if Sookhdeo knew Arabic properly, he would have the capacity to read the Qur’an more clearly. But he does not. This makes it difficult to accept him as an authority on Islamic teachings, whatever may be his post or title.
Sookhdeo goes on to claim that one can pick between Qur’anic verses that support violence and those that support peace. This is true, but one would be hard pressed to demonstrate that the Qur’an condones violence more than the Old Testament (say, for example, the Book of Leviticus or the Book of Joshua). And if we say that the Qur’an condones violence, what are we to think of the passages of the Bible that directly command slaughter and genocide? In Numbers 31:17 Moses says (of the Midianite captives, whose menfolk the Israelites have already slaughtered): “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and every woman who has known a man intimately.” I Samuel 15:1-9 tells the story of the Prophet Samuel commanding King Saul to eradicate the Amalekites as follows: “Slay both men and women, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”
Such extremes were forbidden by the Prophet Muhammad who ordered his community: “Fight in the way of God against those who disbelieve in God! Do not act brutally! Do not exceed the proper bounds! Do not mutilate! Do not kill children and hermits! And likewise, “Attack in the Name of God, but do not revert to treachery; do not kill a child; neither kill a woman; do not wish to confront the enemy.”
To claim that the warfare advocated in some Qur’anic verses is a justification for wanton acts of violence fails to acknowledge that classical interpretations have always limited the scope of such verses. For example, a verse that is often misinterpreted in the modern era is 2:191-92:
Slay the polytheists wherever you find them, and capture them and blockade them, and watch for them at every lookout. But if they repent and establish the prayer and give alms, then let them go their way.
On the one hand, extremists employ this verse to sanction shedding innocent blood. On the other hand, it is employed by non-Muslim polemicists to portray the Qur’an as a bellicose declaration of perpetual warfare. But according to the classical Islamic tradition, this verse cannot be taken as a carte blanche to fight non-Muslims. It can only be applied to the specific polytheists who opposed the early Muslim community and threatened the very survival of Islam. As one authoritative jurisprudent Qadi Abu Bakr Ibn Al-‘Arabi of the 11th - 12th century CE writes:
This verse is general regarding the polytheists, but is restricted by the Prophet’s prohibition of the killing of women, children, religious adherents, and non-combatants. But understood also are those who do not fight you nor are preparing to fight you or harm you. The verse actually means, “Slay the polytheists who are attempting to slay you.”
Such interpretations could be cited ad infinitum. They clearly demonstrate that Sookhdeo’s equation of “radical Muslims” with “medieval jurists” who claim that “Islam is war” is not only unfounded, but an utter distortion. Either Sookhdeo is not qualified to analyze the classical Islamic tradition and compare it to modern deviations, or he is intentionally distorting Islamic teachings. Either way, he proves himself to be completely unreliable.
Dubious Scholarship
Sookhdeo’s dubious scholarship is on display throughout this article, particularly when he uses the hackneyed distinction between Dar al-Islam (the abode of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (the abode of war) to argue that Muslims accept nothing but war or triumph. These are important classical terms, but Muslim scholars also wrote of many other abodes between them. Some classifications include three abodes, some five, and some seven. In the modern era, Europe and America have been regarded by the vast majority of Muslim scholars as the Dar al-Sulh, or “the abode of treaty.” This means that a Muslim can engage with this world on many levels and should abide by the laws of the land if he or she chooses to live there or to visit. Using this distinction, Muslim scholars have even declared that Muslims can serve in the U.S. Army, even when combating other Muslim countries. Only those who seek conflict continue to misinform the public by limiting the world to Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb.
Islamic Scholarship
Sookhdeo’s miscomprehension is also revealed when he discusses the recent conference of Islamic scholars in Jordan, which issued a final declaration that opposed the practice of calling other Muslims non-believers and clarified the qualifications for issuing fatwas. He argues that this has “negated a very helpful fatwa which had been issued in March by the Spanish Islamic scholars declaring Osama bin Laden an apostate.” However, a war of words wherein Muslims begin calling other Muslims unbelievers is precisely what Al-Qaida and other extremists desire. This way they can brand as apostate and kill everyone who disagrees with them. Let us not forget how two days before 9/11, Al-Qaida assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud. This was no mere coincidence; it was a strategic imperative. By removing the most charismatic representative of traditional Islam in Afghanistan, Al-Qaida removed the greatest obstacle to their distortions of Islam, a credible leader who would expose the spurious nature of their claim to represent Islam.
In order to avoid people being killed over even petty faults or sins, classical Islamic law does not allow one to “ex-communicate” another Muslim for sinning nor to declare him or her to be a non-believer. By reaffirming this and removing the possibility of takfir (calling someone an apostate) in our age, King Abdullah’s conference has made the world a safer place. This is true not just for traditional, “moderate” Muslims — the only ones in fact who can effectively isolate the extremists and thus protect non-Muslims — but also for others, such as Jews and Christians whom the Qur’an (and the greatest classical scholars of Islam, such as the famous al-Ghazali) regards as “fellow believers.” Sookhdeo desires to keep this “door” open so that Muslims he does not like can be “ex-communicated.” He wants to keep this “sword” — in effect — unsheathed, completely forgetting that all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword (Matthew 26:52).
Sookhdeo further displays a complete lack of understanding of Islamic law when he asks: “Could not the King reconvene his conference and ask them to issue a fatwa banning violence against non-Muslims also?” In fact this is exactly what did happen by the scholars declaring that the fatwas issued in support of wanton violence are illegitimate. For everyone who commits an act of terrorism in the name of Islam attempts to first justify that act through the issuance — and misuse — of a fatwa, and no one commits terrorist acts without being convinced that terrorism is justified.
The conference reaffirmed that all fatwas must necessarily be bound by a triple system of internal “checks and balances”: all those issuing fatwas must have certain, stringent personal and educational credentials; they must all follow the methodology of the eight Madhahib or tradional schools of Islamic jurisprudence; and no fatwa may go outside the bounds of what the traditional Madhahib allow—precisely what the extremist fatwa s attempt to do. The conference assembled over 180 major scholars from 45 countries, and garnered 17 major fatwas from the greatest Islamic Authorities in the world (including the Sheikh Al-Azhar, Ayatollah Sistani, and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qardawi) to declare this. The conference thus not only de-legitimized the extremists de jure, but, to quote Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek (July 18,2005), constituted “a frontal attack on Al-Qaida’s theological methods.” This is surely a vital tool in the war against extremism, and so the King and his conference are very much to be commended.
Eradicating Extremism
Isolating and eradicating extremists does not, however, appear to be Sookhdeo’s agenda. Rather he wishes to misrepresent the Qur’an, history, and contemporary Muslims in order to substantiate his own claim that terrorism and extremism are inherent to Islam. Following this approach is exactly how we will lose the war on terrorism. The true war is the war of ideas.
The lynch-pin in the arguments of Bin Laden, Zarqawi and others is that they think they represent Islam. Traditional Muslim scholars from around the world have confirmed that such deviant ideologies and actions violate the very principles of Islam. By working with such scholars we can help them to consolidate the traditional middle ground of Islam and further expose the extremists for being just that. This is the most efficient, most peaceful and most effective weapon in the war against extremist interpretations of Islam. If we do not use it, we will have surrendered the higher ground in the war of ideas. By responding with extremism of another kind, Sookhdeo and those like him allow the extremists to determine the general inter-religious ambiance and thus the course of events. Rather than providing a realistic presentation of the challenges we face and their possible peaceful solutions, they take advantage of the situation to advance their own hidden polemical agenda and prejudices. In doing so they work not only against Muslims and Islam, but against the whole of humanity, Christians included (or perhaps especially). Onward Christian soldiers, Reverend Sookhdeo?
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Islam and Muslim Women’s Social Roles
By Maulana Waris Mazhari
(Translated from Urdu by Yoginder Sikand)
The issue of Muslim women’s freedom is a much-debated subject today. The traditional ulema and the modern educated Muslim intelligentsia appear to be completely at loggerheads on the issue. The former insist that women must be controlled as much as possible in order to protect Muslim society from immorality and sexual licentiousness, and that they must remain confined to their homes. They believe that women must play no social roles outside the domestic sphere whatsoever. If women are permitted to do so, they argue, it would open to floodgates of chaos and lead to a breakdown of society. On the other hand, the modern-educated Muslim intelligentsia is in favour of expanding women’s roles outside the narrow domestic sphere, and many of them go so far as to consider the hijab or modest dress for women as a symbol of oppression.
The female personality, it must be admitted, is extremely sensitive. On women the character of a society depends as much as it does on men. It must also be admitted that the attitude of Muslim religious circles towards women and women’s issues is influenced less by Islam and shariah norms than by other factors, among these being a marked reaction to the perceived widespread immorality in the West as a result of the free intermingling of sexes in Western societies. While in the West women have made important gains in several respects, it cannot be denied that in the name of women’s liberation and freedom they have been turned into sexual beings and commodities. This unfortunate phenomenon has led to a reaction among the ulema, leading them to insist on the control of women and on confining them to the domestic sphere as a defence mechanism for fear of Muslim society also falling prey to the same social ills that today plague the West. This stance may have had some temporary benefits, but it has caused a tragic loss to the Muslim community by denying half its population—Muslim women—the opportunity to develop and put to proper use their talents, skills and capacities.
It is not just the traditional ulema who, because of their excessively defensive and cautious approach to women’s social roles, have caused such damage to Muslim women and to the wider Muslim society. Even the supposedly ‘enlightened’ and more ‘modern’ Islamist scholar, Maulana Syed Abul ‘Ala Maududi shared similar views. In fact, in his widely-red book Purdah Maududi comes across as even more stern and extreme in his opposition to women’s freedom than the traditional ulema. For instance, the putative founders of the four major schools of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence and their followers all allowed for Muslim women to keep their faces unveiled, while Maududi stiffly opposed this, along with several modern ulema, claiming that a woman’s face was the centre of her beauty and, hence, a principal source of fitna or strife. It is striking to note that the classical ulema did not consider this argument as worthy of attention. However, going against their opinion, the influential twentieth century Deobandi scholar Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi even went to the extent of insisting that a woman’s name must never be mentioned in a newspaper. An ideal woman, according to him, is one who hides in her own home and is so unknown outside that her neighbours are not even aware of her existence. He allowed for girls to acquire only basic literacy skills but not to advance beyond that. Thanwi’s contemporary and virulent opponent, Ahmad Raza Khan, the leading figure of the Barelvi sect, was even more dismissive of women, going so far as to demean them. So opposed to women’s rights were some of these ulema of relatively recent times, who are still immensely popular among their followers today, that they upheld and propagated a completely baseless and utterly laughable theory that women’s voices were also to be ‘veiled’. It can be confidently said that their approach towards women and their rights and roles was in marked contrast to that of the early ulema, who were clearly more accommodative and accepting of women and their social roles.
How this strong misogynist streak and extreme defensiveness and sensitivity with regard to women emerge among the ulema is a subject that requires close and detailed historical scrutiny. The origins of this lie far back in history, in the medieval period, when, in the wake of the Tatar invasions and devastation of Muslim lands, chaos reigned supreme. It was perhaps but natural that a marked defensiveness and insularity emerged at this time in order to consolidate Muslim society that had suffered such widespread destruction and bloodshed. This was reflected in increasing restrictions on women, which were absent in the early Islamic period, including at the time of the Prophet. It was at this time that questions such as the permissibility or otherwise of women learning to read were hotly-debated. The renowned medieval Hanafi scholar Mulla Ali Qari went so far as to issue a fatwa declaring it impermissible for women to learn to write, and even wrote an entire book on the subject to justify his point, although there had been notable literate women in the early Islamic period, many of who were, in fact, the teachers of renowned male ulema. For over six hundred years the ulema continued to inconclusively debate whether women were permitted to read and write, and it was only in the late nineteenth century that a fatwa was issued, by the noted Indian scholar Maulana Abdul Haye Firanghi Mahali, abrogating the fatwa of Mulla Ali Qari.
Islam, it must be stressed, does not support the sort of emancipation of women as is current in the West, but nor does it stand for the sort of extreme restrictions on women, tantamount to imprisonment, that many traditionalist Islamic scholars advocate. The Islamic position is somewhat in between these two extremes. It stands for freedom of women at the social level within certain limits and with certain conditions. If the issue is looked at from the perspective of the Quran and the practice of the Prophet and the early Muslims, it would be evident that Islam does not place any restriction on the physical movement of women. It also outlines women’s social roles in considerable detail, roles that early Muslim played, not being bound within the four walls of their homes. A good illustration of this is the appointment of a woman, Shifa Bint Abdullah al-‘Adawiya, by Umar, the second Caliph of the Sunnis, as the superintendent of the market of Medina, the then capital of the Islamic Caliphate. Today’s traditional ulema might regard the marketplace as the most potent site of fitna or chaos, but yet this woman was appointed to oversee Medina’s commercial hub. At the time of the Prophet, women were free to pray in mosques and even offered their services on the battlefield. They would listen to the sermons of the Prophet in the presence of men, without any restriction, and would ask the Prophet questions. Umm-e Haram, a woman companion of the Prophet, requested him to pray for her so that she might be able to participate in jihad in the path of God. During the Caliphate of Uthman, the third Sunni Caliph, she sailed to Cyprus, where she participated in a battle. Asma, daughter of Abu Bakr, father-in-law of the Prophet and the first Sunni Caliph, helped her husband Zubayr Bin al-Awa‘am in his work outside their home, and would even massage his horses and travel a long distance to get grains for them to eat, which she would carry on her head. The case of the Caliph Umar being corrected by a woman while delivering a sermon and making him admit his error is well-known.
From these instances, it is clear that in this period of Muslim history women’s minds and voices were not ‘veiled’. Nor was there any discussion of keeping men and women rigidly separate from each other. The books of Hadith are replete with narrations that clearly indicate that at this time men and women saw each other’s faces, spoke to each other, engaged in transactions with each other and assisted each other in different activities. The wives of the Prophet, known as the ‘mothers of the believers’ (ummhat al-mu‘minin), were specially required, as the Quran indicates, to observe purdah, but this did not stop male companions of the Prophet from appearing before them and learning from them. The youngest of the Prophet’s wives, Ayesha, had many male disciples, to whom she related numerous narrations of and about the Prophet.
Besides these examples from early Muslim history, one can cite references in the Quran to prove the point that certain forms of interaction between men and women is indeed permissible in Islam, in contrast to what many traditionalist ulema might argue, Thus, for instance, the Quran talks about the meeting between the prophet Solomon and Bilqis, Queen of Sheba and their conversation; the meeting between Zachariah and Mary, mother of Jesus; and the meeting and discussion between the daughter of Shoeb and Moses and of the former taking the help of the latter to provide water to her animals. Since the Quran exhorts Muslims to emulate the practice of the previous prophets, it is obvious that these forms of interaction between men and women are also permitted to Muslims.
The Quran states: ‘The believers, men and women, are protectors, one of another: they enjoin what is just, and forbid what is evil’ (9:71). The Quran considers it the responsibility of both men and women to perform various social roles, the performance of which is not possible without their common participation and mutual assistance. Given this, the extreme hesitation or reluctance of some Islamic scholars to allow Muslim women to play these legitimate roles has, to a large extent, to do with local cultural mores rather than with the teachings of Islam or the practice of the Prophet and the early Muslims.
It is a fact that misogyny has been in existence for centuries, and traces of it remained in societies that later became Muslim even after accepting Islam. At the same time, it is also undeniable that, for the first time, Islam sought to provide women with their legitimate rights, and to provide them an elevated status in society. The Prophet and his companions strove to combat deep-rooted prejudices against women, not just on the ideological plane but also in practical terms. However, after the early Islamic period, when Muslim society entered a phase of decline, women’s status suffered a major set-back. Just as Islamic justice demanded that slavery be abolished but, yet, slavery still remained, so, too, while Islam sought to emancipate women, anti-women prejudice could not be fully rooted out from Muslim society. To buttress this prejudice, many narrations were concocted and were falsely attributed to the Prophet and to his companions that projected women in an extremely derogatory fashion. One such false narration, which, lamentably, is still often quoted in traditionalist ulema circles, exhorts: ‘Take the advice of women but do the precise opposite of what they advise.’ Another such tradition declares: ‘To obey a woman is a matter of shame.’ A third such fabricated narration declares: ‘Men were destroyed when they obeyed women’. Yet another such concocted narration claims: ‘If women did not exist, the right of God to be worshipped would have been performed in a better way.’ Likewise, the following statement was falsely attributed to the Imam Ali: ‘Woman is wholly bad.’
In this light of all this, it is incumbent on Islamic scholars to review their position on and understanding of women and critique and challenge the deep-rooted misogyny that is, unfortunately and wrongly, seen as inseparable from Islam. It is imperative that our traditionalist scholars no longer stand in the way of Muslim women being able to access the rights granted to them by Islam, and which they enjoyed at the time of the Prophet.
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Maulana Waris Mazhari is the editor of the New Delhi-based monthly Tarjuman Darul-Uloom, the official organ of the Graduates' Association of the Deoband madrasa.
Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion at the National Law School, Bangalore.
(Translated from Urdu by Yoginder Sikand)
The issue of Muslim women’s freedom is a much-debated subject today. The traditional ulema and the modern educated Muslim intelligentsia appear to be completely at loggerheads on the issue. The former insist that women must be controlled as much as possible in order to protect Muslim society from immorality and sexual licentiousness, and that they must remain confined to their homes. They believe that women must play no social roles outside the domestic sphere whatsoever. If women are permitted to do so, they argue, it would open to floodgates of chaos and lead to a breakdown of society. On the other hand, the modern-educated Muslim intelligentsia is in favour of expanding women’s roles outside the narrow domestic sphere, and many of them go so far as to consider the hijab or modest dress for women as a symbol of oppression.
The female personality, it must be admitted, is extremely sensitive. On women the character of a society depends as much as it does on men. It must also be admitted that the attitude of Muslim religious circles towards women and women’s issues is influenced less by Islam and shariah norms than by other factors, among these being a marked reaction to the perceived widespread immorality in the West as a result of the free intermingling of sexes in Western societies. While in the West women have made important gains in several respects, it cannot be denied that in the name of women’s liberation and freedom they have been turned into sexual beings and commodities. This unfortunate phenomenon has led to a reaction among the ulema, leading them to insist on the control of women and on confining them to the domestic sphere as a defence mechanism for fear of Muslim society also falling prey to the same social ills that today plague the West. This stance may have had some temporary benefits, but it has caused a tragic loss to the Muslim community by denying half its population—Muslim women—the opportunity to develop and put to proper use their talents, skills and capacities.
It is not just the traditional ulema who, because of their excessively defensive and cautious approach to women’s social roles, have caused such damage to Muslim women and to the wider Muslim society. Even the supposedly ‘enlightened’ and more ‘modern’ Islamist scholar, Maulana Syed Abul ‘Ala Maududi shared similar views. In fact, in his widely-red book Purdah Maududi comes across as even more stern and extreme in his opposition to women’s freedom than the traditional ulema. For instance, the putative founders of the four major schools of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence and their followers all allowed for Muslim women to keep their faces unveiled, while Maududi stiffly opposed this, along with several modern ulema, claiming that a woman’s face was the centre of her beauty and, hence, a principal source of fitna or strife. It is striking to note that the classical ulema did not consider this argument as worthy of attention. However, going against their opinion, the influential twentieth century Deobandi scholar Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi even went to the extent of insisting that a woman’s name must never be mentioned in a newspaper. An ideal woman, according to him, is one who hides in her own home and is so unknown outside that her neighbours are not even aware of her existence. He allowed for girls to acquire only basic literacy skills but not to advance beyond that. Thanwi’s contemporary and virulent opponent, Ahmad Raza Khan, the leading figure of the Barelvi sect, was even more dismissive of women, going so far as to demean them. So opposed to women’s rights were some of these ulema of relatively recent times, who are still immensely popular among their followers today, that they upheld and propagated a completely baseless and utterly laughable theory that women’s voices were also to be ‘veiled’. It can be confidently said that their approach towards women and their rights and roles was in marked contrast to that of the early ulema, who were clearly more accommodative and accepting of women and their social roles.
How this strong misogynist streak and extreme defensiveness and sensitivity with regard to women emerge among the ulema is a subject that requires close and detailed historical scrutiny. The origins of this lie far back in history, in the medieval period, when, in the wake of the Tatar invasions and devastation of Muslim lands, chaos reigned supreme. It was perhaps but natural that a marked defensiveness and insularity emerged at this time in order to consolidate Muslim society that had suffered such widespread destruction and bloodshed. This was reflected in increasing restrictions on women, which were absent in the early Islamic period, including at the time of the Prophet. It was at this time that questions such as the permissibility or otherwise of women learning to read were hotly-debated. The renowned medieval Hanafi scholar Mulla Ali Qari went so far as to issue a fatwa declaring it impermissible for women to learn to write, and even wrote an entire book on the subject to justify his point, although there had been notable literate women in the early Islamic period, many of who were, in fact, the teachers of renowned male ulema. For over six hundred years the ulema continued to inconclusively debate whether women were permitted to read and write, and it was only in the late nineteenth century that a fatwa was issued, by the noted Indian scholar Maulana Abdul Haye Firanghi Mahali, abrogating the fatwa of Mulla Ali Qari.
Islam, it must be stressed, does not support the sort of emancipation of women as is current in the West, but nor does it stand for the sort of extreme restrictions on women, tantamount to imprisonment, that many traditionalist Islamic scholars advocate. The Islamic position is somewhat in between these two extremes. It stands for freedom of women at the social level within certain limits and with certain conditions. If the issue is looked at from the perspective of the Quran and the practice of the Prophet and the early Muslims, it would be evident that Islam does not place any restriction on the physical movement of women. It also outlines women’s social roles in considerable detail, roles that early Muslim played, not being bound within the four walls of their homes. A good illustration of this is the appointment of a woman, Shifa Bint Abdullah al-‘Adawiya, by Umar, the second Caliph of the Sunnis, as the superintendent of the market of Medina, the then capital of the Islamic Caliphate. Today’s traditional ulema might regard the marketplace as the most potent site of fitna or chaos, but yet this woman was appointed to oversee Medina’s commercial hub. At the time of the Prophet, women were free to pray in mosques and even offered their services on the battlefield. They would listen to the sermons of the Prophet in the presence of men, without any restriction, and would ask the Prophet questions. Umm-e Haram, a woman companion of the Prophet, requested him to pray for her so that she might be able to participate in jihad in the path of God. During the Caliphate of Uthman, the third Sunni Caliph, she sailed to Cyprus, where she participated in a battle. Asma, daughter of Abu Bakr, father-in-law of the Prophet and the first Sunni Caliph, helped her husband Zubayr Bin al-Awa‘am in his work outside their home, and would even massage his horses and travel a long distance to get grains for them to eat, which she would carry on her head. The case of the Caliph Umar being corrected by a woman while delivering a sermon and making him admit his error is well-known.
From these instances, it is clear that in this period of Muslim history women’s minds and voices were not ‘veiled’. Nor was there any discussion of keeping men and women rigidly separate from each other. The books of Hadith are replete with narrations that clearly indicate that at this time men and women saw each other’s faces, spoke to each other, engaged in transactions with each other and assisted each other in different activities. The wives of the Prophet, known as the ‘mothers of the believers’ (ummhat al-mu‘minin), were specially required, as the Quran indicates, to observe purdah, but this did not stop male companions of the Prophet from appearing before them and learning from them. The youngest of the Prophet’s wives, Ayesha, had many male disciples, to whom she related numerous narrations of and about the Prophet.
Besides these examples from early Muslim history, one can cite references in the Quran to prove the point that certain forms of interaction between men and women is indeed permissible in Islam, in contrast to what many traditionalist ulema might argue, Thus, for instance, the Quran talks about the meeting between the prophet Solomon and Bilqis, Queen of Sheba and their conversation; the meeting between Zachariah and Mary, mother of Jesus; and the meeting and discussion between the daughter of Shoeb and Moses and of the former taking the help of the latter to provide water to her animals. Since the Quran exhorts Muslims to emulate the practice of the previous prophets, it is obvious that these forms of interaction between men and women are also permitted to Muslims.
The Quran states: ‘The believers, men and women, are protectors, one of another: they enjoin what is just, and forbid what is evil’ (9:71). The Quran considers it the responsibility of both men and women to perform various social roles, the performance of which is not possible without their common participation and mutual assistance. Given this, the extreme hesitation or reluctance of some Islamic scholars to allow Muslim women to play these legitimate roles has, to a large extent, to do with local cultural mores rather than with the teachings of Islam or the practice of the Prophet and the early Muslims.
It is a fact that misogyny has been in existence for centuries, and traces of it remained in societies that later became Muslim even after accepting Islam. At the same time, it is also undeniable that, for the first time, Islam sought to provide women with their legitimate rights, and to provide them an elevated status in society. The Prophet and his companions strove to combat deep-rooted prejudices against women, not just on the ideological plane but also in practical terms. However, after the early Islamic period, when Muslim society entered a phase of decline, women’s status suffered a major set-back. Just as Islamic justice demanded that slavery be abolished but, yet, slavery still remained, so, too, while Islam sought to emancipate women, anti-women prejudice could not be fully rooted out from Muslim society. To buttress this prejudice, many narrations were concocted and were falsely attributed to the Prophet and to his companions that projected women in an extremely derogatory fashion. One such false narration, which, lamentably, is still often quoted in traditionalist ulema circles, exhorts: ‘Take the advice of women but do the precise opposite of what they advise.’ Another such tradition declares: ‘To obey a woman is a matter of shame.’ A third such fabricated narration declares: ‘Men were destroyed when they obeyed women’. Yet another such concocted narration claims: ‘If women did not exist, the right of God to be worshipped would have been performed in a better way.’ Likewise, the following statement was falsely attributed to the Imam Ali: ‘Woman is wholly bad.’
In this light of all this, it is incumbent on Islamic scholars to review their position on and understanding of women and critique and challenge the deep-rooted misogyny that is, unfortunately and wrongly, seen as inseparable from Islam. It is imperative that our traditionalist scholars no longer stand in the way of Muslim women being able to access the rights granted to them by Islam, and which they enjoyed at the time of the Prophet.
----------------
Maulana Waris Mazhari is the editor of the New Delhi-based monthly Tarjuman Darul-Uloom, the official organ of the Graduates' Association of the Deoband madrasa.
Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion at the National Law School, Bangalore.
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