Rethinking
Islam
Serious
rethinking within Islam is long overdue. Muslims have been
comfortably relying, or rather falling back, on age-old
interpretations for much too long. This is why we feel so painful in
the contemporary world, so uncomfortable with modernity. Scholars
and thinkers have been suggesting for well over a century that we
need to make a serious attempt at Ijtihad, at reasoned
struggle and rethinking, to reform Islam. At the beginning of the
last century, Jamaluddin Afghani and Mohammad Abduh led the call for
a new Ijtihad; and along the way many notable intellectuals,
academics and sages have added to this plea - not least Mohammad
Iqbal, Malik bin Nabbi and Abdul Qadir Audah. Yet, ijtihad is one
thing Muslim societies have singularly failed to undertake. Why?
The
why has now acquired an added urgency. Just look around the Muslim
world and see how far we have travelled away from the ideals and
spirit of Islam. Far from being a liberating force, a kinetic
social, cultural and intellectual dynamics for equality, justice and
humane values, Islam seems to have acquired a pathological strain.
Indeed, it seems to me that we have internalised all those historic
and contemporary western representations of Islam and Muslims that
have been demonising us for centuries. We now actually wear the
garb, I have to confess, of the very demons that the West has been
projecting on our collective personality.
But
to blame the West, or a notion of instrumental modernity that is all
but alien to us, would be a lazy option. True, the West, and
particularly America, has a great deal to answer for. And Muslims
are quick to point a finger at the injustices committed by American
and European foreign policies and hegemonic tendencies. However,
that is only a part, and in my opinion not an insurmountable part,
of the malaise. Hegemony is not always imposed; sometimes, it is
invited. The internal situation within Islam is an open invitation.
We
have failed to respond to the summons to Ijtihad for some
very profound reasons. Prime amongst these is the fact that the
context of our sacred texts – the Qur’an and the examples of the
Prophet Muhammad, our absolute frame of reference – has been
frozen in history. One can only have an interpretative relationship
with a text – even more so if the text is perceived to be eternal.
But if the interpretative context of the text is never our context,
not our own time, then its interpretation can hardly have any real
meaning or significance for us as we are now. Historic
interpretations constantly drag us back to history, to frozen and
ossified context of long ago; worse, to perceived and romanticised
contexts that have not even existed in history. This is why while
Muslims have a strong emotional attachment to Islam, Islam per se,
as a worldview and system of ethics, has little or no direct
relevance to their daily lives apart from the obvious concerns of
rituals and worship. Ijtihad and fresh thinking have not been
possible because there is no context within which they can actually
take place.
The
freezing of interpretation, the closure of ‘the gates of ijtihad’,
has had a devastating effect on Muslim thought and action. In
particular, it has produced what I can only describe as three
metaphysical catastrophes: the elevation of the Shari`ah to the
level of the Divine, with the consequent removal of agency from the
believers, and the equation of Islam with the State. Let me
elaborate.
Most
Muslims consider the Shari`ah, commonly translated as
‘Islamic law’, to be divine. Yet, there is nothing divine about
the Shari`ah. The only thing that can legitimately be
described as divine in Islam is the Qur’an. The Shari`ah is
a human construction; an attempt to understand the divine will in a
particular context. This is why the bulk of the Shari`ah actually
consists of fiqh or jurisprudence, which is nothing more than
legal opinion of classical jurists. The very term fiqh was
not in vogue before the Abbasid period when it was actually
formulated and codified. But when fiqh assumed its systematic
legal form, it incorporated three vital aspects of Muslim society of
the Abbasid period. At that juncture, Muslim history was in its
expansionist phase, and fiqh incorporated the logic of Muslim
imperialism of that time. The fiqh rulings on apostasy, for
example, derive not from the Qur'an but from this logic. Moreover,
the world was simple and could easily be divided into black and
white: hence, the division of the world into Daral Islam and Daral
Harb. Furthermore, as the framers of law were not by this stage
managers of society, the law became merely theory which could not be
modified - the framers of the law were unable to see where the
faults lay and what aspect of the law needed fresh thinking and
reformulation. Thus fiqh, as we know it today, evolved on the
basis of a division between those who were governing and set
themselves apart from society and those who were framing the law;
the epistemological assumptions of a ‘golden’ phase of Muslim
history also came into play. When we describe the Shari`ah as
divine, we actually provide divine sanctions for the rulings of
by-gone fiqh.
What
this means in reality is that when Muslim countries apply or impose
the Shari`ah – the demands of Muslims from Indonesia to Nigeria -
the contradictions that were inherent in the formulation and
evolution of fiqh come to the fore. That is why wherever the
Shari`ah is imposed – that is, fiqhi legislation is
applied, out of context from the time when it was formulated and out
of step with ours - Muslim societies acquire a medieval feel. We can
see that in Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and the Taliban Afghanistan.
When narrow adherence to fiqh, to the dictates of this or
that school of thought, whether it has any relevance to real world
or not, becomes the norm, ossification sets in. The Shari`ah will
solve all our problems becomes the common sentiment; and it becomes
necessary for a group with vested interest in this notion of the
Shari`ah to preserve its territory, the source of its power and
prestige, at all costs. An outmoded body of law is thus equated with
the Shari`ah, and criticism is shunned and outlawed by appealing to
its divine nature.
The
elevation of the Shari`ah to the divine level also means the
believers themselves have no agency: since The Law is a priori given
people themselves have nothing to do expect to follow it. Believers
thus become passive receivers rather than active seekers of truth.
In reality, the Shari`ah is nothing more than a set of principles, a
framework of values, that provide Muslim societies with guidance.
But these sets of principles and values are not a static given but
are dynamically derived within changing contexts. As such, the
Shari`ah is a problem-solving methodology rather than law. It
requires the believers to exert themselves and constantly
reinterpret the Qur’an and look at the life of the Prophet
Muhammad with ever changing fresh eyes. Indeed, the Qur’an has to
be reinterpreted from epoch to epoch – which means the Shari`ah,
and by extension Islam itself, has to be reformulated with changing
contexts. The only thing that remains constant in Islam is the text
of the Qur’an itself – its concepts providing the anchor for
ever changing interpretations.
Islam
is not so much a religion but an integrative worldview: that is to
say, it integrates all aspects of reality by providing a moral
perspective on every aspect of human endeavour. Islam does not
provide ready-made answers to all human problems; it provides a
moral and just perspective within which Muslims must endeavour to
find answers to all human problems. But if everything is a priori
given, in the shape of a divine Shari`ah, then Islam is reduced to a
totalistic ideology. Indeed, this is exactly what the Islamic
movements – in particularly Jamaat-e-Islami (both Pakistani and
Indian varieties) and the Muslim Brotherhood – have reduced Islam
to. Which brings me to the third metaphysical catastrophe. Place
this ideology within a nation state, with divinely attributed
Shari`ah at its centre, and you have an ‘Islamic state’. All
contemporary ‘Islamic states’, from Iran, Saudi Arabia, the
Sudan to aspiring Pakistan, are based on this ridiculous assumption.
But once Islam, as an ideology, becomes a programme of action of a
vested group, it looses its humanity and becomes a battlefield where
morality, reason and justice are readily sacrificed at the alter of
emotions. Moreover, the step from a totalistic ideology to a
totalitarian order where every human-situation is open to
state-arbitration is a small one. The transformation of Islam into a
state-based political ideology not only deprives it of its all moral
and ethical content, it also debunks most of Muslim history as
un-Islamic. Invariably, when Islamists rediscover a ‘golden’
past, they do so only in order to disdain the present and mock the
future. All we are left with is messianic chaos, as we saw so
vividly in the Taliban regime, where all politics as the domain of
action is paralysed and meaningless pieties become the foundational
truth of the state.
The
totalitarian vision of Islam as a State thus transforms Muslim
politics into a metaphysics: in such an enterprise, every action can
be justified as ‘Islamic’ by the dictates of political
expediency as we witnessed in revolutionary Iran.
The
three metaphysical catastrophes are accentuated by an overall
process of reduction that has become the norm in Muslim societies.
The reductive process itself is also not new; but now it has reached
such an absurd state that the very ideas that are supposed to take
Muslims societies towards humane values now actually take them in
the opposite direction. From the subtle beauty of a perennial
challenge to construct justice through mercy and compassion, we get
mechanistic formulae fixated with the extremes repeated by people
convinced they have no duty to think for themselves because all
questions have been answered for them by the classical `ulamas,
far better men long dead. And because everything carries the brand
name of Islam, to question it, or argue against it, is tantamount to
voting for sin.
The
process of reduction started with the very notion of `alim
(scholar) itself. Just who is an `alim; what makes him an
authority? In early Islam, an `alim was anyone who acquired `ilm,
or knowledge, which was itself described in a broad sense. We can
see that in the early classifications of knowledge by such scholars
as al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali and Ibn Khuldun.
Indeed, both the definition of knowledge and its classification was
a major intellectual activity in classical Islam. So all learned
men, scientists as well as philosophers, scholars as well as
theologians, constituted the `ulama. But after the ‘gates
of ijtihad’ were closed during the Abbasid era, ilm was
increasingly reduced to religious knowledge and the `ulama
came to constitute only religious scholars.
Similarly,
the idea of ijma, the central notion of communal life in
Islam, has been reduced to the consensus of a select few. Ijma
literally means consensus of the people. The concept dates back to
the practice of Prophet Muhammad himself as leader of the original
polity of Muslims. When the Prophet Muhammad wanted to reach a
decision, he would call the whole Muslim community – then,
admittedly not very large – to the mosque. A discussion would
ensue; arguments for and against would be presented. Finally, the
entire gathering would reach a consensus. Thus, a democratic spirit
was central to communal and political life in early Islam. But over
time the clerics and religious scholars have removed the people from
the equation – and reduced ijma to ‘the consensus of the
religious scholars’. Not surprisingly, authoritarianism, theocracy
and despotism reigns supreme in the Muslim world. The political
domain finds its model in what has become the accepted practice and
metier of the authoritatively ‘religious’ adepts, those who
claim the monopoly of exposition of Islam. Obscurantist Mullahs, in
the guise of the `ulama, dominate Muslim societies and
circumscribe them with fanaticism and absurdly reductive logic.
Numerous
other concepts have gone through similar process of reduction. The
concept of Ummah, the global spiritual community of Muslims,
has been reduced to the ideals of a nation state: ‘my country
right or wrong’ has been transpose to read ‘my Ummah right or
wrong’. So even despots like Saddam Hussein are now defended on
the basis of ‘Ummah consciousness’ and ‘unity of the Ummah’.
Jihad has now been reduced to the single meaning of ‘Holy
War’. This translation is perverse not only because the
concept’s spiritual, intellectual and social components have been
stripped away, but it has been reduced to war by any means,
including terrorism. So anyone can now declare jihad on
anyone, without any ethical or moral rhyme or reason. Nothing could
be more perverted, or pathologically more distant from the initial
meaning of jihad. It’s other connotations, including personal
struggle, intellectual endeavour, and social construction have all
but evaporated. Istislah, normally rendered as ‘public
interest’ and a major source of Islamic law, has all but
disappeared from Muslim consciousness. And Ijtihad, as I have
suggested, has now been reduced to little more than a pious desire.
But
the violence performed to sacred Muslim concepts is insignificant
compared to the reductive way the Qur’an and the sayings and
examples of the Prophet Muhammad are brandied about. What the late
Muslim scholar, Fazlur Rahman called the ‘atomistic’ treatment
of the Qur’an is now the norm: almost anything and everything is
justified by quoting individual bits of verses out of context. After
the September 11 event, for example, a number of Taliban supporters,
including a few in Britain, justified their actions by quoting the
following verse: ‘We will put terror into the hearts of the
unbelievers. They serve other gods for whom no sanction has been
revealed. Hell shall be their home’ (3: 149). Yet, the apparent
meaning attributed to this verse could not be further from the true
spirit of the Qur’an. In this particular verse, the Qur’an is
addressing Prophet Muhammad himself. It was revealed during the
battle of Uhud, when the small and ill equipped army of the Prophet,
faced a much larger and well-equipped enemy. He was concerned about
the outcome of the battle. The Qur’an reassures him and promises
the enemy will be terrified with the Prophet’s unprofessional
army. Seen in its context, it is not a general instruction to all
Muslims; but a commentary on what was happening at that time.
Similarly hadiths are quoted to justify the most extremes of
behaviour. And the Prophet’s own appearance, his beard and cloths,
have been turned into a fetish: so now it is not just obligatory for
a ‘good Muslim’ to have a beard, but its length and shape must
also conform to dictates! The Prophet has been reduced to signs and
symbols – the spirit of his behaviour, the moral and ethical
dimensions of his actions, his humility and compassion, the general
principles he advocated have all been subsumed by the logic of
absurd reduction.
The
accumulative effect of the metaphysical catastrophes and endless
reduction has transformed the cherished tenants of Islam into
instruments of militant expediency and moral bankruptcy. For over
two decades, in books like The Future of Muslim Civilisation
(1979) and Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come (1985), I
have been arguing that Muslim civilisation is now so fragmented and
shattered that we have to rebuild it, ‘brick by brick’. It is
now obvious that Islam itself has to be rethought, idea by idea. We
need to begin with the simple fact that Muslims have no monopoly on
truth, on what is right, on what is good, on justice, nor the
intellectual and moral reflexes that promote these necessities. Like
the rest of humanity, we have to struggle to achieve them using our
own sacred notions and concepts as tools for understanding and
reshaping contemporary reality.
The
way to a fresh, contemporary appreciation of Islam requires
confronting the metaphysical catastrophes and moving away from
reduction to synthesis. Primarily, this requires Muslims, as
individuals and communities, to reclaim agency: to insist on their
right and duty, as believers and knowledgeable people, to interpret
and reinterpret the basic sources of Islam: to question what now
goes under the general rubric of Shari`ah, to declare that much of fiqh
is now dangerously obsolete, to stand up to the absurd notion of an
Islam confined by a geographically bound state. We cannot, if we
really value our faith, leave its exposition in the hands of under
educated elites, religious scholars whose lack of comprehension of
the contemporary world is usually matched only by their disdain and
contempt for all its ideas and cultural products. Islam has been
permitted to languish as the professional domain of people more
familiar with the world of the eleventh century than the
twenty-first century we now inhabit. And we cannot allow this class
to bury the noble idea of Ijtihad into frozen and distant
history.
Ordinary
Muslims around the world who have concerns, questions and
considerable moral dilemmas about the current state of affairs of
Islam must reclaim the basic concepts of Islam and reframe them in a
broader context. Ijma must mean consensus of all citizens
leading to participatory and accountable governance. Jihad must be
understood in its complete spiritual meaning as the struggle for
peace and justice as a lived reality for all people everywhere. And
the notion of the Ummah must be refined so it becomes
something more than a mere reductive abstraction. As Anwar Ibrahim
has argued, the Ummah is not ‘merely the community of all
those who profess to be Muslims’; rather, it is a ‘moral
conception of how Muslims should become a community in relation to
each other, other communities and the natural world’. Which means
Ummah incorporates not just the Muslims, but justice seeking and
oppressed people everywhere. In a sense, the movement towards
synthesis is an advance towards the primary meaning and message of
Islam – as a moral and ethical way of looking and shaping the
world, as a domain of peaceful civic culture, a participatory
endeavour, and a holistic mode of knowing, being and doing.
Ziauddin
Sardar:
A cultural critic, Muslim scholar, author of many books, and editor of Futures: The Journal of Planning, Policy, and Futures Studies. His newest book is Ziauddin Sardar's A-Z of Postmodern Life (Visions Publications, Feb
2002). He is based in London.
