As
merciless killers acting under the banner of Islam
have come to unleash their wrath on the streets of
New York, Madrid, London, and Sharm El-Sheikh,
Muslim scholars and leaders have unanimously
joined the increasingly vehement choir of
condemnation. During a recent London conference,
members of the International Association of Muslim
Scholars (IAMS) emphatically stated that they are
“appalled to see the bloody incidents both
inside and outside the Muslim world such as those
that took place in Egypt, London, Turkey, and
other countries.”
From
his sickbed the popular Egyptian scholar Dr. Yusuf
Al-Qaradawi hailed the IAMS conference, writing:
This
will help free Islam from the baseless
accusations ascribed to it among which are
torture, killing displacement, exemplary
punishment, suppression and violation of the
sanctity of others. This will also help us to
refute the claims of those who are deviating
from the straight path of Islam.1
Public
condemnation of attacks on civilians by Muslim
representatives is doubtlessly sincere, very
necessary, and implies a welcome recognition that,
although we refuse to be held collectively
responsible for the crimes of a few, we
nonetheless bear the shared responsibility to
counter political and theological extremism within
our ranks.
However,
a general reticence among our intellectual and
scholarly leadership to translate rhetorical
determination into suggested courses of action has
been far from overcome, and the uncomfortable
question of how far the roots of intolerant and
violent ideology among certain Muslim
constituencies can be traced to modern doctrinal
and legal trends within Islam, is still
predominantly met with cynical references to
Western “neo-imperialist” exploits in the
Middle East.
No
matter how valid these grievances are, they simply
do not suffice to clarify why men and women
hailing from widely divergent cultural and
geographical backgrounds and in very different
political, social, and economic contexts, find
moral and doctrinal justification for killing
civilians in militant interpretations of Islamic
scripture.
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Translating
rhetorical determination into suggested
courses of action has been far from overcome. |
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Generally,
Muslims are rightfully eager to refer to the
global solidarity and relative consistency of
belief and praxis that legitimize the concept of
the single Ummah, a concept that captures the
unique unison felt by Muslims all around the
world, in spite of real differences in the
interpretation of particulars. It is now time to
equally acknowledge the less attractive
implications of this unique sense of unity: the
responsibility to collectively and unremittingly
combat unacceptable transgressions of the
doctrines and values which have united us for 14
centuries and have guaranteed the integration of
Muslim communities into many foreign spheres, as
well as to sincerely dedicate ourselves to a
continuous and rigorous process of self-scrutiny,
intellectual re-evaluation, and (re)education of
the younger generations. If our understanding of
the Ummah is sincere, we have no right to deny
responsibility for its failures or disintegration.
But
how to take on this challenge? How to create a
Muslim culture which is God-conscious, self-aware,
educated, informed about the realities and causes
of terrorism, and determined to join all its
efforts to resolve the moral and doctrinal crisis
besetting us—at whatever cost?
The
primary challenge is to gain an understanding of
how our political, social, and emotional context
influences our reading, borrowing, interpreting,
ignoring, and essentializing doctrines and
concepts within our scripture and scholarly
tradition. These matters should be approached in a
genuine spirit of self-reflection, even—and this
is crucial—if the answers contradict our
personal political sentiments, school of thought,
opinions, movement, or sect. The great minds who
unlocked the mysteries and intent of our
scriptural texts for posterity can assist in
guiding us towards the necessary attitude.
Allah,
majestic in His praise, revealed in the Qur’an:
(O
ye who believe! Be ye staunch in justice,
witnesses for Allah, even though it be against
yourselves or (your) parents or (your) kindred,
whether (the case be of) a rich man or a poor
man, for Allah is nearer unto both (them ye
are). So follow not passion lest ye lapse (from
truth) and if ye lapse or fall away, then lo!
Allah is ever Informed of what ye do.)
(An-Nisaa’ 4:135)
Al-Qurtubi,
considered the greatest exegete and imam of the
Ahl as-Salaf, elaborates on this verse in his
Qur’anic exegesis, Jami` al-Bayan fi `Ulum
al-Qur’an (The Compendium of Illumination
in Qur’anic Science):
Bear
witness, son of Adam, even when against
yourself, your parents, your kin, or the noble
men of your people; for, bearing witness is for
Allah’s sake, not for the sake of people.
Allah permitted justice unto Himself. Fairness
and justice are Allah’s balance on earth.
The
classical exegete Fakhr Ad-Din Ar-Razi also
comments on this verse in his At-Tafsir
Al-Kabir (The Grand Exegesis),
emphasizing that justice should always precede
personal interest:
The
majority of people are accustomed to commanding
others with goodness. If the matter is
attributed to them, they set it aside. So much
so that when the ugliest [of deeds] is
originated by them, it is taken into the area of
forgiveness and most beautiful [of deeds]. But
when it is originated by other than themselves,
it is taken into the area of dispute. Allah Most
High warned in this verse against the awfulness
of this way.
Revelation
also warns us against the manipulation of
testimony, be it through sidelining, ignoring,
twisting, or deceiving:
(Hide
not testimony. He who hideth it, verily his
heart is sinful. Allah is Aware of what ye do.)
(Al-Baqarah 2:283)
To
maintain the callous and stubborn conviction that
Islam plays no role of importance in the
motivations of Muslim terrorists is not only naïve;
it reveals a self-righteous disregard for the
Qur’anic and exegetic precepts of divine justice
which, as defined above, insist on self-scrutiny
before finger-pointing, and which demand a
dedication to truth even if it incriminates our
own family—let alone our coreligionists.
Submission of the will to anger and vengefulness
in the name of political struggle belies the
Islamic principle that all our actions and
intentions should be solely for the sake of Allah.
The fact that violence and injustice are inflicted
upon us by others may never justify a less
scrupulous observation of the Qur’anic code of
ethics with regard to war and conflict.
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We
have to conjure up the courage to genuinely
analyze the role of the “internal”
issues, movements, and figures. |
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Once
we are able to take responsibility for our role in
the current crisis, in addition to emphasizing the
local and global socio-economic conditions that
contribute to Muslim violence, we will have to
conjure up the intellectual courage to genuinely
analyze the role of the “internal” issues,
movements, and figures—no matter how sensitive
and explosive they are—that are generally
associated with an increasing tide of religious
literalism and intolerance among disenfranchised
Muslim youth: such as the theological, legal, and
political implications of Wahhabism, the legacy of
Sayyid Qutb, anti-Jewishness (rather than
anti-Zionism or anti-Semitism), the breakdown of
scholarly authority, inconsistency in condemning
and condoning suicide bombings,2
the re-invention of Ibn Taymiyah’s
political thought, political Islamists’
overemphasis on a utopian Islamic state, and
failure to formulate viable alternatives to
despotic political regimes.
Much
of our attention should focus on the legal
dimension of Islam because the spread of religious
intolerance primarily manifests itself in
arbitrary reductions or extensions of classical
Shar`iah concepts to suit modern political and
ideological motives. For example, the extension of
the concept of takfir (declaring a Muslim
to be a disbeliever in Islam), the rampant
application of accusations of heresy and bid`ah
(innovation), the dismissal of conciliatory
Shar`iah concepts relating to the Other (Ahl
Al-Kitab, Ahl Adh-Dhimmah, jizyah, dar
al-`ahd or even dar al-harb), and the
reduction of the relationship between Muslims and
non-Muslims to anti-Western ideological polemics.
A
poignant illustration of the rhetorical barriers
erected in the way of a sincere examination of the
aforementioned themes can be observed in the
article “The
Source of ALL Evil?” by Egyptian
writer Taqiyuddin Malik, which was recently
published on IslamOnline.net—to start with
ourselves. The article is a bitter polemic against
the author’s perceived demonization of the
Wahhabi movement as the source of all evil by
Western media and Muslim “insta-pundits” and
“pseudo-intellectuals.” The author’s scorn
is particularly directed at the UK-based Muslim
intellectual and writer Ziaudin Sardar, who in a
recent article severely criticized the role of
Saudi-grown Islam in the dissemination of an
anti-historical, monolithic, and
self-righteousness Islamic culture that could
ultimately lead to violence.
The
pros and cons of Sardar’s views aside, the
hypothesis that Wahhabism is not the source
of all evil cannot be denied by anyone with
any sobriety. Indeed, the majority of those
inspired by the rigid transcendentalism of
Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab and his heirs are not
terrorists, nor is terrorism their ultimate
objective. However, Malik’s article, which
promisingly commences as a valid demand for
academic accuracy in dealing with Islamic history
and ideas, ends up offering disappointingly scant
alternative historical or theological perspectives
apart from a few retrospective statements that
fail to touch upon the substance of Wahhabi
thought and its centrality to modern violent
ideologies. (“Did everyone lose sight of the
fact that before Wahhabism, much of the Arabian
peninsula’s population had degenerated back into
pagan, fetishistic adoration of graves, shrines,
trees, and relics?”)
In
fact, the piece rapidly descends into a diatribe
against a motley of Muslim organizations
(Al-Fatiha), individuals (Sardar, Irshad Manji,
Amina Wadud, and a collective of unnamed
“insta-pundits”) and outlooks
(traditionalism), of which the sole common
denominator is that Malik believes they
unrightfully criticize Wahhabism, “twist Islamic
discourse” and “make all the correct
sympathetic noises about terrorism,” thereby
allegedly causing division and
“self-loathing”—without providing any
further specification of the context and content
of the respective views of the accused. By this
approach the author exposes the same rhetorical
weakness he so vehemently accuses in Sardar: a
reductionist and over-simplified portrayal of a
widely diverse set of individuals and visions, and
consequently the stigmatization of any Muslim
effort at engaging in sympathetic dialogue with
Western audiences or critical engagement with
their own religious tradition. No matter how
objectionable the views of some of these
individuals are, their refutation should center on
exactly those views and not the individuals’
supposed “opportunist,”
“pseudo-intellectual,” “knee-jerking,”
“over-dramatic,” and “propagandist”
tendencies.
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We
should put our mistakes as a collective body
before those of others and endeavor to solve
our mistakes through positive means. |
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Rather
than challenging the “self-righteousness” his
opponent claims to observe in Wahhabi thought,
Malik goes on the offensive. When stating that
“unlike many of the new wave of Islamic
‘traditionalists,’ … Wahhabism utterly
rejects the notion of compelling an individual to
obey the precepts of a single madhhab
[school of jurisprudence] … demonstrating
a flexibility that many of those same
‘liberal’ Muslim intellectuals … would
probably deride as a ‘heretical
innovation,’” he not only confuses two
entirely different perspectives on Shari`ah3 but
also presents a false comparison between madhhabi
rigidity and Wahhabi legal flexibility—for as
scholars of each madhhab necessarily
respected the legal rulings of the other three
schools as equally valid (thus maintaining a vast
scope for disagreement), the Wahhabi legal
paradigm has essentialized a small corpus of
rulings from the Hanbali madhhab to the
exclusion of all other schools of fiqh. With this
simplistic juxtaposition of ideas, the author does
more to corroborate Sardar’s accusation than to
disclaim it.
As
Muslims, we should stand up to the formidable
challenge of terrorism. No matter where we stand
on the ideological or doctrinal continuum, it is
imperative on us all to strive towards realizing
Islam’s essence, which is anchored in mercy and
justice. Mercy, kindness, magnanimity, and
determination still exist within this Ummah, and
when coupled with the continuous pursuit of
Allah’s assistance, these qualities can change
the world around us. This is not the “knee-jerk,
self-loathing, finger-pointing” exercise that
Malik believes to be advocated under “the
euphemistic title of self-criticism.” It is the
imperative introspection that Allah (majestic in
His praise) commands us to act by as He swears
[Nay! I swear by the self-accusing soul)
(Al-Qiyamah 75:2).
**Tarek
A. Ghanem is the editor of the Contemporary
Issues Page. He holds a BA in political science
and pPhilosophy and is a student of Islamic
religious sciences. You can contact him at
address.
Rahma
Bavelaar is the editor of the Art &
Culture Page. She holds an MA in African studies
from the School of Oriental and African Studies in
London, UK. You can contact her at shabeel02@yahoo.co.uk.
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