The thirst to know, the imperative to think and reflect was
the most resonant chord, the insistent theme I found running throughout the
Qur’an.
Throughout this conversation my father remained silent. His
speciality was sitting quietly and fuming…. His seismic cycle was linked in
comfortable, connubial fashion to the pattern of my mother’s discourse. He
would sit there, an Etna occasionally sending out smoke signals but otherwise
just forming the scenic backdrop, until my mother had finished. At which point
his tectonic plates would realign, causing a perturbation in his magma chamber
that would generate a potent lava flow. His eruptions were made only to
contradict – and every now and then to disparage – what she had said. Like an
assured volcanologist, I sat quietly waiting for his intervention.
………..the great collections of Hadith compiled by Imam
al-Bukhari, who died in 869 and Imam Muslim, who died in 875…The authentic
voices that became traditional authority were more critical and less certain of
their opinions. They thought and wrote as men of their own changing times, not
as monuments of imperishable stone.
I was deeply impressed by how gentle and moderate the
classical scholars really were. Take Bukhari, the compiler of one of the major
collections of authentic Hadith. An exceptionally polite and mild mannered
person, Bukhari in fact pioneered the science of Hadith criticism, a vast field
of research combining ethics, morality, sociology, law, politics, economics and
logic into a unique discipline of intellectual inquiry. At the heart of Hadith
criticism is the notion of isnad, or
attestation. It concerns tracing each link in the chain of narrators, those who
reported a saying or action of the Prophet. Nothing was taken for granted,
critical inquiry required investigating the qualities of each link in the chain
as regards memory, accuracy, truthfulness, examining their competence as
reliable witnesses whose testimony would be accepted in the court of civil law
and tracing the chain back to Prophet Mohammad himself. But even that was not
good enough. Time and geographical circumstances had to be investigated to establish
that it was physically possible for individuals in the chain of narrators to
have met. Moreover, further investigations were needed to ensure that the
Hadith was not against reason or established historical fact; or against the
teachings of the Qur’an; or that it did not express a partisan view, or that it
did not contain warning of heavy punishment for ordinary lapses of conduct or
mighty rewards for ordinary acts of piety.
Bukhari ….would take a bath and pray every time he examined
a particular Hadith – given that he had collected around 600,000, it is not
surprising it took him sixteen years to compile his collection of authentic
Hadith: the Sahih. ….Of all the
Hadith he examined, he included about 7,000 in his book and labelled only 2,602
as authentic. Having compiled the Sahih
he was still not satisfied, he revised the text three times. When it was
finally published, Bukhari’s reputation spread far and wide.
Consider Imran Malik. The School of Islamic Law this Medinan
scholar inspired is said to be the most rigid, extreme and uncompromising. Yet
Malik himself was anything but rigid and free from doubt. He was asked by the
Caliph to write a book that would be distributed throughout the Muslim world as
a guide to Islamic law. Anyone differing from this book could then be
prosecuted. Malik rejected the idea outright, declaring his opinions were not
certain. Anyway, he said, the Companions of the Prophet were to be found all
over the Muslim world, and people could learn from these individuals, rather than
from a single book. Imam Malik insisted there was more than one way to practice
Islam; and that people should be free to go to any fountain of knowledge they
deemed fit. Much the same can be said of Imam Shafi’i, a disciple of Imran
Malik. Shafi’i ……after visiting Iraq, where the jurists followed the School
established by Imam Hanafi, another mild-mannered individual who favoured
personal reasoning than total reliance on Hadith and analogy. Shafi’i concluded
that Maliki theories had many weaknesses. But after debating with Hanafi
scholars, he concluded that the Hanafi School too was flawed. He devoted the
last years of his life to producing a synthesis of the two Schools of Thought
which appeared as Al-Shafi’i Risala.
…..The legal opinions of these scholars, the substance that forms the body of
Islamic Law, was never meant to be absolute, comprehensive or eternal, let
alone the ultimate understanding of what constitutes the Law in Islam. They
themselves saw, and emphasized, that their personal opinions were just
opinions, which they changed frequently, and never intended to be Eternal Law.
To claim, as for example Hassan al-Banna did, that the Imams had solved all
problems for all time, amounts to attributing divine authority to gentle,
unassuming, unsure men, Who can say that Islamic Law, as it exists, is the
final word on everything?
….it became increasingly apparent that collectively, my
group of Islamist friends were short on two things: self-doubt and forgiveness.
The first led many to see the world in black and white. The second sowed the
seeds of discord amongst us.
…..Rosser-Owen quoted a verse by an Arabic poet: ‘So long as
belief and unbelief are not perfectly equal, no man can be a true Muslim.’
‘What is Sufism?’…..the tenth-century mystic Abul Hasayn
an-Nuri….replied: ‘Sufism is neither external [experience] nor knowledge, it is
all virtue.’ Al-Junayd, who is credited with formulating the Sufi path,
answered: ‘Sufism is that you should be with God without any attachment.’
…….Samnun…end of the ninth century…..said: ‘Sufism is that you should not
possess anything nor should anything possess you.’ An alternative approach to
pinning down Sufism is to define it in terms of its central experience – fana. Fana literally means to be dissolved, to be annihilated. Junayd……
when ‘you die to yourself and live by Him’. Essentially, it is the negation of
the Self: negation of will, existence, self-consciousness and being; forsaken
for union with God, assimilation into His will….. The discipline that leads Sufis
to fana is zikr: the act of remembering Allah. Zikr can consist of elaborate procedures but usually involves
saying ‘Allah’ loudly, stretching the word as it is pronounced, and saying it
with all the force of heart and throat.
Sheikh Nazim Adil Haqqani, a Cypriot Sufi…… ‘There are three
big snakes that harm human beings,’ he said. ‘Beware of them: to be intolerant
and impatient with the people around you; to be dependent on something you
cannot leave; and to be controlled by your ego.’…..the Sheikh said ….. ‘I am
the collector of souls. I polish souls till the ego has evaporated…… There is
too much information in the head of young seekers. You must empty your mind of
all that you know. Only then can you begin the journey towards tasawwuf.’
Hypocrisy, fanaticism and self-righteousness were dismissed
by [Nasruddin] Hodja with equal
candour…….. In a famous story, Hodja suggests that every argument has more than
one side: two men involved in a quarrel ask Hodja to settle their dispute. When
the first man tells his version, Hodja says: ‘You are right.’ The second
protests, demanding to tell his version, after which Hodja remarks: ‘You’re
right.’ His wife, who has been listening, intervenes: ‘But they cant both be
right.’ Hodja promptly replies: ‘Woman, you’re right, too’ Muslims everywhere
need a character like him to lean against……
In classical Islam the quest for knowledge had always been
intimately linked with extensive travel; a fact endorsed by none other than
Al-Ghazali. The eleventh-century philosopher and theologian is a towering
figure in Islamic history …..is the classical author most Muslims turn to in
despair. …..while writing about
certainty, he was perpetually on the edge of doubt, always searching for truth,
moving from one fit of skepticism to another. ‘No one believes,’ he said,
‘until he has doubted.’….. For al-Ghazali travel is an essential component of
belief……Both worldly knowledge and inner knowledge of one’s Self and one’s
position in the cosmos are acquired through travel ……
Al-Ghazali distinguishes two general categories of travel: rihla and safar. …….Rihla is
outward, physical travel, professionally undertaken…… Safar involved physical exertion as well as inner transformation,
liberation and attainment ……The journey must transport the individual towards
new experiences and encounters and force him to perceive the interconnectedness
of all things around him ……The traveler learns from mixing with ordinary people
who force him to constantly re-examine his own assumptions, his accustomed routine
of activity and thought, thus transforming him from the inside and producing a
new synthesis.
The Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, resting place of the Beloved
Prophet Muhammed…..Medina, the ancient city of Yathrib, is the second holiest
city of Islam ……the social and commercial life of the city focused around the
Prophet’s Mosque. The original mosque was built of sun-dried brick, the floor
was of earth and the ceiling constructed of palm fronds covered with mud and
supported by pillars of palm wood. This mosque has been rebuilt a number of
times over the centuries, added to and made splendid by caliphs and kings. The
Ottomans in particular paid a great deal of attention both to the Prophet’s
mosque and to the City ……..In the time
of King Abdul Aziz, it still retained its Ottoman flavor ….At the entrance to
the city, a splendid inner castle stood as a reminder of the medieval wall
which once defended it. Streets were lined with stucco houses, ornamented with
intricately worked wooden lattices. The Prophet’s mosque was rose red with
Ottoman minarets and magnificent gates surmounted with gold inscriptions set
there by Turkish calligraphers. …..between 1948 and 1955, during the reigns of
two successive Saudi Kings, the mosque was extended by one-third and entirely
rebuilt in grey stone…….most of the old city was left untouched. Only a few
large modern hotels overshadowed the old houses, and here and there occasional
car parks appeared as eyesores. ……. ‘In June 1973,’ Angawi’s voice was clipped
with emotion, ‘there came a second transformation. In a matter of days ……the
whole city was razed to the ground.’ No one complained. Indeed, not many knew
what had happened. ‘Fourteen hundred years of history and tradition disappeared
in a dust cloud, gone’
Like most Saudis, Al-Turki was more polite than frank
Throughout their history, it is said, the Bedouins had
nothing and owned nothing; but they had plenty of time. They enjoyed hanging
around, waiting, not rushing to do anything in particular. So, waiting has
become an essential ingredient of Saudi life.
……the thirteenth-century Muslim political scientist Ibn
Taymiyya……was concerned, almost exclusively, with the strength and survival of
the Muslim community at a time when Islam, recovering from the onslaught of the
Crusades, was under siege from the Mongols. He saw dissension amongst Muslims
as their main weakness and sought to ban plurality of interpretations.
Everything had to be found in the Qur’an and the Sunnah; and even theology and
philosophy, Ibn Taymiyya asserted boldly, had no place in Islam. The Qur’an had
to be interpreted literally. When the Qur’an, for example, says God sits on His
throne, He sits on His throne, period. No discussion can be entertained on the
nature of the throne or its purpose. Nothing can be read metaphorically or
symbolically.
The students from Medina University were fiercely loyal both
to their Saudi mentors and their particular school of thought. The Wahhabism
they learned was manufactured on the basis of tribal loyalty – but the place of
traditional tribal allegiance was now taken by Islam. Everyone outside this
territory was, by definition, a hostile dweller in the domain of unbelief.
Those who stood outside their domain were not limited to non-Muslims; they
included all those Muslims who have not given allegiance to Wahhabism. The
ranks of unbelief were swollen by the Shias, the Sufis, and followers of other
Islamic schools of thought…… The students would often tell me that any alliance
with the unbelievers was itself unbelief; that one should not just refrain from
associating or making friends with them, but should also shun their employment,
advice, emulation, and try to avoid conviviality and affability towards them.
In Saudi Arabia ……all men in the Kingdom are dressed in
white…..White is the natural colour for such an extreme climate; it reflects
the sun and absorbs very little heat. Women have to be covered, from head to
toe, by law, in black shrouds that absorb all the sun and all the heat. Women
wear their shrouds ninja fashion, observing not traditional female Muslim
dress, hijab, but the more extensive niqab, the head-covering that leaves
only a narrow slit where the eyes are visible. The only place in Saudi Arabia
where this refinement of dress is not seen is within the precincts of the
Sacred Mosque itself where the conventional Islamic precepts of female garb
include the requirement for the face to be uncovered.
By radically denying the complexity and diversity of Islamic
history, over time and vast areas of the world, and rejecting diverse,
pluralistic interpretations of Islam, Wahhabism has stripped Islam of all its
ethical and moral content and reduced it to an arid list of dos and don’ts. To
insist that anything that cannot be found in a literal reading of the sources and
lore of early Muslims is kufr –
outside the domain of Islam – and to enforce this comprehensive vision with
brute force and severe social pressure for complete conformity spells
totalitarianism.
…Wahhabism, I had concluded, had been employed to introduce
two metaphysical catastrophes in Islam.
First, by closing the interpretations of our ‘absolute frame
of reference’ – the Qur’an and the life of Prophet Muhammad – it had removed
agency from believers …..Muslim societies were doomed to exist in suspended
animation. If everything was a priori
given, nothing new could really be accommodated. The intellect, human
intelligence, became an irrelevant encumbrance since everything could be
reduced to a simple comply/not comply formula derived from the thought of dead
bearded men.
Second, by assuming that ethics and morality reached their
apex, indeed an end point, with the Companions of the Prophet….. negated the
very idea of evolution in human thought and morality. Indeed, it set Muslim
civilization on a fixed course to perpetual decline. …..the challenge of our
time, I argued, was to work out values and norms that were clearly and
distinctively better than those worked out by Companions of the Prophet.
We Muslims live among the wreckage of our heritage, we lop off
its sophistication, lose precious works of subtle minds that once strove to
pursue inventiveness within our own dynamic framework.
Most Muslims consider the Shariah to be divine. But there is
nothing divine about the Shariah, I explained. The only thing that can
legitimately be described as divine in Islam is the Qur’an. The Shariah is a
human construction; an attempt to understand the divine will in a particular
context – and that context happens to be eighth-century Muslim society. We need
to understand the Shariah in our own context; and reconstruct it from first
principles…
….Asma Barlas …..an outspoken feminist scholar of Islam
…..The Shariah, she explained, was formulated by jurists, all of them male,
during the Abbasid period (749-1258), a time in history well known for its
sexism and misogyny. This male bias is evident in the way the Shariah treates
women and men unequally, particularly when it comes to criminal justice. An
obvious example relates to testimonies where we have the notorious ‘two-for-one
formula’. ‘Equating the testimony of two women with that of one man,’ said
Asma, ‘naturally leads to a view of the woman being half a man’. But, explained
Asma, the Qur’an discusses at least five cases which involve the giving of
evidence, and in only one case does it suggest taking two women as witnesses in
place of one man. In the far more crucial case of adultery, the Qur’an
privileges the testimony of the wife over that of the husband. So, for example,
if a husband charges his wife with adultery and cannot produce four male
witnesses to the act of penetration, he cannot serve as his own witness. In
such instances, the Qur’an allows the wife to testify on her own behalf and if
she swears her innocence, it does not give her husband any further legal
recourse against her. ‘Now, the classical jurists did not take this to mean
that men should testify in fours or that the woman’s word outranks that of the
man’s!’
The Shariah also fails to distinguish between different
types of extramarital sex, Asma said. For example, it does not differentiate
between adultery, fornication and rape. As a result, women who are victims of
rape and sexual abuse can find themselves – and have found themselves, not just
in Pakistan but also other Muslim countries like Nigeria and the Sudan – being
charged with a crime and sentenced to be stoned to death. ‘Stoning to death,’
Asma emphasized, ‘is another aberrant law since the Qur’an does not sanction
stoning to death for any crime
whatsoever.’
‘….to call for reforming the Shariah is equated with an
attach on Islam,’ Asma replied….. The Mullahs have been particularly clever in
equating religion with law…. To change the Shariah we have to stand up to
powerfully entrenched clerics and interpretative communities who will put up a
deafening roar against such an exercise on the grounds that it is un-Islamic or
even anti-Islamic. And in this way they continue to underwrite their own
monopoly on religious knowledge. ‘Another irony for a people whose religion
does not sanction a class of professional interpretators of religious knowledge
in the form of a clergy’ ………. ‘The Shariah and veiling of women have become the
quintessential symbols of Islam. As we know, the veneration of symbols can keep
people from thinking about what the symbols actually symbolize.’
….Parvez Manzoor ….. ‘So, in essence, the Shariah is
morality and ethics rather than law,’ I said.
‘Precisely,’ Parvez shot back …… ‘But the Muslim mind does
not distinguish between ethics and law.’
‘What if law becomes unethical? And truth becomes equated
with method?’
‘Ah,’ said Parvez, ‘this is precisely what happened in
Islamic history.’
………There was no Shariah at the time of the death of Prophet
Muhammad….. for almost 150 years after the death of the Prophet, the
accumulated ensemble of the exercise of ‘learning’ and ‘understanding’, which
was the religious knowledge of Islam, was not called the Shariah. This
knowledge was largely personal, free and somewhat subjective. The first act of
objectification and reification occurred during the early Abbasid period when
this accumulated knowledge was confused with history ….. Thus, history became a
substitute for religious inquiry and learning but as the historically frozen
corpus of juristic rulings. The Will of God, which was previously discovered
through intellectual methods, was now seen as being expressed in injunctions
and prohibitions……. From the second Islamic century onwards there emerged a set
of mechanisms, or disciplines, for understanding the Word of God. Toward the
end of the Abbasid period, that is around the thirteenth century, this
mechanism, known collectively as fiqh,
came to constitute ‘the jurisprudence of Islam’. It entirely determined the
form and content of the Shariah. ‘The “method” of the Shariah became
indistinguishable from the “truth” of Islam itself,’ Parvez explained.
‘So, in fact, the Shariah, as understood by Muslims today,
has nothing really to do with the truth of Islam. It is in fact largely fiqh, a body of historically frozen
judicial thought and rulings?’
‘Indeed,’ replied Parvez. ‘It is a theoretically founded
mechanism for traditional authoritarianism. Small wonder that Islamic theology
and law have developed little since then.’
We both concurred that the method of the Shariah does not
encourage bold, innovative and speculative thought. Its preoccupation with
existentially concrete ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ stifles creative imagination, and as
a consequence, makes Shariah-minded individuals and cultures conservative and
backward-looking in their general outlook on life…..it has become a tool of
oppression
I had finally reached a firm conclusion: without reforming
the Shariah, which actually amounts to reformulating Islam itself, a humane
earthly paradise will always elude Muslim societies….. Muslim individuals and
communities had to reclaim agency: the right to reinterpret their religious
texts according to their own time and context. In reality, the Shariah is
nothing more than a set of principles, a framework of values that provides
Muslim societies with guidance. But these sets of principles and values are not
static or indeed a priori given, but are dynamically derived within changing
contexts. And the duty to reinterpret the basic sources of Islam belongs not to
revered men long dead, or to obscurantist Mullahs who exercise power over
Muslim communities in the name of these classical scholars, but to each
individual Muslim. The believers cannot simply be blind imitators….The hurdles
obstructing the path to a new watering hole come, as they always have, from deeply
entrenched religious and political power structures.
The European Reformation resulted in the transfer of
authority for the governance of this world from the Church to the State, from
Popes to princes. It was the origin of the process known as secularization.
This began with the theological struggle for reform of religion, and it
culminated in the secular state being seen as the only authority that could
guarantee liberty of conscience and diversity of religious belief.
What do you get when you separate Shariah from the State,
religion from politics? The question haunted Muslim scholars and thinkers from
the early days of Islam. ….One of the foremost Muslim thinkers to give serious
thought to this issue was the philosopher Al-Farabi…….belonged to a group of
thinkers who were collectively known as the Mutazilites, literally the
Separatists. …..all denounced strict, Shariah-based faith and worked to
transform Islam into a more humanistic religion. The Mutazilites argued that with reason alone
one could know how to act morally; and by corollary, there was no necessity to
combine religion and statecraft.
….Iftikar Malik …… ‘Secularism is the only antidote to the
vicious literalism, supported by a spiritless and meaningless ritualism that’s
taken hold of the Muslim mind’ ……..Iftikar was ready to concede that
secularists can be just as doctrinaire as religious persons. But in his view
secularism provided an umbrella for pluralism to flower, for dissent to be
tolerated, for democracy to flourish in Muslim societies …. ‘…..I’m arguing for
secularism not at the expense of religion but as a method for reinterpreting
and revisiting religion itself.’
In France and Germany, Muslim girls in headscarves are often
seen as a threat to secular civilization and banned from attending school. But
non-Muslim (white) women wearing scarves are seen as chic and fashionable. Why
this dichotomy? …. A secular society does not provide its citizens with
absolute freedom but confines it within the boundaries of its own absolutes…..
‘…. “Islamic Revolution” in Iran. It’s the standard pattern:
a charismatic leader heads the initial movement; once his regime is
established, demands for greater radicalism and purism culminate in a reign of
terror and virtue where the leader is transformed into a demigod and becomes
sole arbitrator of what’s “revolutionary” and what “counter-revolutionary”.
That’s what happened in Turkey. Mustafa Kemal played the role of demigod
admirably: “I am Turkey,” he declared ….’
Where did the European Enlightenment come from? ….Its
foundations were laid by Islam. Islam taught Europe virtually all it knew about
science, philosophy and education……how to differentiate between civilization
and barbarism, and to understand the basic features of a civil society. Islam trained
Europe in scholastic and philosophic method, and bequeathed it its
characteristic institutional forum of learning: the university. …showed Europe
the distinction between medicine and magic, drilled it in making surgical
instruments and explained how to establish and run hospitals. And the Ottomans
played an important part in all this.’ …….. ‘Liberal humanism, the hallmark of
post-Renaissance Europe’ Ekmeleddin explained, ‘has its origins in the adab movement of Islam, which was
concerned with the etiquette of being human.’
………The Satanic Verses
……….. What I, and most Muslims, took exception to was Rushdie’s deliberate
attempt to rewrite the life of Prophet Muhammad in an exceptionally abusive and
obscene way…….. In the novel, Rushdie uses the abusive term ‘Mahound’, coined
in the Middle Ages in Christendom to describe the Prophet as a devil, to
reframe the biography of Muhammad……. The passages of The Satanic Verses that caused most offence to Muslims relate to
the wives of the Prophet Muhammad. In the episode of the Curtain, a
prostitutes’ den, Rushdie explicitly gives each prostitute the name of one of
the wives..
Malay Islam is often described as ‘gentle’, moderate and
eclectic ….. Much of this gentleness comes from mysticism….The Sufis….were more
tolerant to pre-Islamic beliefs……left an indelible imprint on the Malay mind
….Spanish Islam too was deeply influenced by mysticism ……
‘What made Andalusia so successful for so long…..?’ asked
Merryl.
….Gulzar Haider answered …..‘There was ethnic pluralism,
religious tolerance, an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and culture – from
painting to poetry to music to philosophy. And no one thought these things to
be un- or anti-Islamic. And now we lack them all.’
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