Islam and its interpretations

September 29, 2014

 

Islam is often wrongly and wilfully portrayed as being somehow unique in having had a violent history. But what is unique about Islam is that while other religious movements, particularly Christianity, got over their early violent origins, it failed to move on and update its theological precepts

There has been no Islamic equivalent of  Enlightenment and Renaissance, and the Islamic mindset remains awkwardly out of step with historical progress and therefore with modern times.

What is Islam?

I know Islam’s critics will be dying to answer this question, but it is more important to hear it from Muslims themselves because, after all, it is their conflicting interpretations of Islam which are behind so much of the confusion and mayhem around the world. A religion of peace, yet a religion which is invoked to wreak such mindless violence. A religion which is said to accord dignity, respect and equality to women; yet a religion in which a woman’s testimony is only half as good as a man’s. A religion which exhorts its followers to gain knowledge even if it means “going to China”; yet some of whose most noisy campaigners despise knowledge and are prepared to kill little girls for attending school. And a religion which preaches tolerance and coexistence; yet which has become synonymous with hate and intolerance.

So, what is Islam really about?

Islamic theology

In his book, What Is History? , E.H. Carr urged people to read the historian before they read his or her history in order to get a sense of where that historian is coming from. Many Muslims will say that the same analogy applies to Islam: its interpretation depends on who is interpreting it. So, extremists will interpret it to suit their own agenda while moderate Muslims would offer a different interpretation. But the trouble with this explanation is that it is at odds with the claim that Islam is so perfect, that it is beyond debate or interpretation. Its teachings and edicts are meant to be immutable. Take it or leave it. This claim itself then takes a knock when we hear so many bewilderingly different interpretations that, let alone non-Muslims, even ordinary Muslims are left confused and frustrated. A healthy internal debate is one thing, but tawdry public disputes over the fundamentals of Islam — jihad , sharia, caliphate — is quite another.

What, then, is the problem?

To be fair, it is not entirely the fault of interpreters, and in this I include those who wilfully misinterpret it to promote their sectarian or extremist ideas. The potential for misinterpretation and misunderstanding lies in Islamic theology itself. The Koranic text is a minefield of ambiguity, allowing people to cherry-pick its equivocal and often contradictory verses to back their argument. Similarly, it is easy to manipulate Hadith (a compilation of Prophet Mohammad’s sayings and teachings), another major source of legitimacy for Islamic acts. This is because they are too numerous, were pronounced in vastly different situations, and compiled many years after his death with the result that their precise meaning was frequently lost in translation. Sometimes they were quoted outside the original context. They are routinely plucked out of context to support bizarre claims.

Then there is the problem of “inauthentic” Hadith — sayings attributed to the Prophet which he may or may not have uttered. Even many authentic Hadith have been found to be flawed because of misinterpretation or contextual errors.

On jihad

We have seen a great deal of quibbling over the meaning of jihad . Muslims insist that the “real” concept of jihad does not involve violence and bears no resemblance to Islamists’ interpretation of it. The “real” or “greater” jihad , they say, means a peaceful inner spiritual struggle. An armed struggle against an external enemy is regarded as “lesser” jihad and permitted only in specific circumstances — for example, in self-defence. Theoretically true. Yet, it is also true that around the dining table in Muslim households, the term jihad is invariably used in its violent sense and mentioned in the same breath as “kaafirs.” I grew up in an extremely liberal environment, but I don’t recall, in private conversations, jihad ever being referred to in its philosophical sense. In Indian Muslim discourse, the term normally used for personal struggles, whether social, economic or emotional, is “jaddo jehad” derived from Urdu.

Extremists can be accused of inventing circumstances that, in their opinion, would justify violent jihad , or of targeting the wrong “enemy,” and using appallingly brutal methods of executing their “ jihad. ” But they cannot be accused of inventing the notion of violent jihad itself. There is no denying the streak of violence which — according to distinguished British Pakistani Islamic scholar Ziauddin Sardar — is “inherent” in Islam. But that is not the point. All religions, especially those which set out to gain followers through proselytisation and to conquer empires, have violent histories. Campaigns to “Christianise” Pagan Europe in the Middle Ages were not always peaceful, and then, of course, there is the bloody history of Inquisition and the Crusades.

To a large extent, Islam is often wrongly and wilfully portrayed as being somehow unique in having had a violent history. But what is unique about Islam is that while other religious movements, particularly Christianity, got over their early violent origins, it failed to move on and update its theological precepts. There has been no Islamic equivalent of Enlightenment and Renaissance, and the Islamic mindset remains awkwardly out of step with historical progress, and therefore with modern times — a hiatus reinforced by attempts to assert an Islamic identity through beards and hijabs .

But to return to the question, “what is Islam?” ask any Muslim and they will solemnly enumerate all its nobler aspects: its emphasis on community and oneness which has made it the world’s fastest growing religion; its rejection of caste or class; the spirit of inquiry it fosters; its command not to bow to any temporal authority (thumbs down for authoritarianism and dictatorship); its stress on simple and spartan living; a unique system of zakat to prevent concentration of wealth in a few individual hands; a complete “no, no” to social and economic exploitation; and its egalitarianism. Prophet Mohammed personally oversaw huge reforms in the pre-Islamic slavery practices in Arabia and appointed a former Ethiopian slave, Bilal Ibn Ribah as the first Muezzin in Islam after helping him gain freedom.

Faces of Islam

Muslims will cite Koranic verses and Hadith to underline Islamic injunctions against violence; its command to treat women with respect and accord them equality; its message of tolerance, love, brotherhood, and its exhortation that we treat even our enemies with respect and try to win them over through love and persuasion rather than force. But this is one face of Islam. It also has another, less pleasant, face. For, the Islam preached by the Taliban and their fellow travellers is also Islam; and if you ask them, they will also cite Koranic verses and Hadith to back their claims. Their methods may be extreme but their philosophy does derive legitimately from the same Islamic theology that the good face of Islam does. Muslims must stop being in denial about it.

And this brings us back to what lies at the heart of the problem with Islam — namely the somewhat rough-and-ready nature of the fundamentals of Islamic sources, including the Koran, the central religious text of Islam comprising truths which, Muslims believe, were revealed to the Prophet by Allah from time to time until his death. The Koranic text, in the form of “ aayts ’’ (verses), is not thematically linked nor provides context with the result that an “ aayt ” which might have originated in a specific context is sometimes contradicted by another “ aayt ” on the subject but stated in a different context. This allows a free-for-all scramble for people to grab what might suit them in a given situation. Hence the confusion and the spectacle of extremists and their opponents both quoting the Koran in support of their positions. There is a similar confusion over Hadith, as explained earlier.

The way out is for an Islamic equivalent of the New Testament. Learned Islamic scholars need to put their heads together and present basic scriptures in a manner that the meaning and context of every “ aayt ” and every Hadith is made unambiguously clear, leaving no room for misinterpretation or misrepresentation. This annotated text should then be declared as the authorised version of Islamic beliefs. Otherwise, we will continue to struggle to understand what real Islam is while leaving the field open for fanatics to distort it at will.

(Hasan Suroor is the author of India’s Muslim Spring: Why Is Nobody Talking About It? E-mail: hasan.suroor@gmail.com )

 

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/islam-and-its-interpretations/article6455633.ece

The lost moral of Islam’s divide

June 21, 2014

Updated: June 21, 2014 00:41 IST

 

With the exception of the Quran, there are no religious or historical references that the Sunnis and Shias agree on

 

Shajahan Madampat

The Sunni-Shia divide is increasingly engulfing Muslim societies in many parts of the world in spasms of internecine violence. The latest developments in Iraq with the Islamic State of Iraq and [Greater] Syria (ISIS) making rapid advances towards Baghdad are an ominous reflection of the deepening of sectarian animosities within contemporary Islam. The potential impact of the current turbulence will be felt far beyond West Asia and North Africa. The developments also indicate — especially in light of the marginalisation of the Muslim Brotherhood and other mainstream Islamist outfits in Egypt, Syria and to a limited extent in Tunisia — that political Islam or Islamism will now be championed with much more lethal effect by groups that profess allegiance to radical Salafism, such as the ISIS.

Islamism, defined broadly, is an ideological construct based on a political reading of Islam in both its history and textuality. It argues that the primary duty of a Muslim is to strive for the establishment of an Islamic state, without which Islam will remain a ‘house half-built.’ Salafism (or Wahhabism) is a theologically puritanical approach that argues for a literal reading of the scriptures, shunning all accretions in matters of faith and life. What is common between the two, however, is that they both operate on a binary notion of the world.

The coming together of Salafism and Islamism is nothing new as al-Qaeda perfectly represented the merger of the otherwise irreconcilable worldviews of the two radical streams. In fact, Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri personified this coming together of radical Salafism and uncompromising Islamism. The former’s worldview can be traced to the atavistic theology of the 18th century Saudi theologian-activist Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdul Wahhab, while the latter inherited the nihilistic fanaticism of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood icon Syed Qutub. But it is with the outbreak of civil war in Syria that we saw the ‘coming out’ of this dangerous concoction from its hideouts in Afghanistan, Yemen and North Africa. The giant strides they are now making in Iraq are indicative of the changing contours of Islamism on the one hand and the new-found role that this brand of Islamism invented for itself against the portentous backdrop of the Sunni-Shia divide.

Origin of the divide

The origin of this divide — the principal fault line within Islam — goes back 14 centuries to the very beginning of Islam. Interestingly, there was nothing religious about it at the beginning as it was a purely political dispute over which an entire theological and jurisprudential edifice was superimposed later on in order to canonise and perpetuate it into a distinctive clerical order. At the core of the dispute was an impassioned argument over whether the principle of succession in the nascent Muslim state should be dynastic or meritorious. The majority of Muslims in the early years of the faith chose merit over dynasty and argued that the prophet’s temporal and spiritual successors should be selected on the basis of their competence, seniority, knowledge and experience. A minority disagreed and said the basis of succession should be familial rather than meritorious. They believed the temporal and spiritual leadership of Muslim society should remain confined to the descendants of the prophet forever.

They thought Ali — the younger cousin and son-in-law of the prophet — deserved the honour, as he was not only a staunch companion of the prophet but also his closest family member by virtue of birth and marriage. Shia is an abbreviation for Shia’t Ali, the party of Ali, and is built around the victimhood of the prophet’s family following his death. The Sunnis do not dispute the importance of Ali and do not disparage him in any way; they consider him one of the greatest companions of the prophet along with the others, including the three other caliphs who preceded Ali in the seat of power. In a way, the difference between Sunni and Shia approaches to Ali is comparable to the difference between Islamic and Christian approaches to Jesus Christ. While both the religions converge on the greatness of Jesus as a man of God, they diverge on questions of his divinity and deification. Just as no Muslim will ever disparage Jesus, no Sunni will ever speak ill of Ali. Like in the case of the two Semitic religions, it was the differences and not the commonalities that were given accent throughout history, resulting in an entrenched culture of de-sacralisation and demonisation of the other on both sides. The fact that the two sects chose to follow totally different references in their respective approaches to jurisprudence and theology widened the gulf further over the centuries. With the exception of the Quran, which in any case has been susceptible to multiple and often contradictory interpretations, there are no religious or historical references that the Sunnis and Shias agree on.

Point of agreement

What is most interesting in this context is that both the sects agree on the need for an Islamic political system on earth. While the Islamists on both sides argue for the primacy of an Islamic state, the others express minor disagreements on questions of prioritising an Islamic state over those of building an Islamic society. No known mainstream religious organisation among both the sects rejects the idea of an Islamic majoritarian state as a desired eventuality. There is total consensus among all that justice will flourish only in such a state where the Sharia would replace all other sources and methods of legislation. What about justice for those who belong to other faiths or no faiths is a minor detail glossed over by self-righteous rhetoric.

This brings us to one of the most exasperating paradoxes in Islamic history. While the only consensus that ever existed across the sects in Islam has been on the desirability of (an immediate or eventual) Islamic state governed according to the Sharia, the principal divide of all times in Muslim society happened because there was no clear concept of a state or political system in Islam. It goes without saying that the method of electing the ruler is the most basic part of any political system, the absence of clarity on which triggered the first and foremost split among the Muslims. The festering wounds of that split continue to bleed the community to this day.

The Quran and the Prophet’s rich traditions left the choice of political systems or the nature of the state to the wisdom of the people and their circumstances. The followers, however, persisted with their delusional search for a theocratic utopia, denuding a faith of its humane core in the process. The Quran stressed on persuasion in matters of faith while the Islamists saw coercion (with the state being its ultimate and most legitimate instrument) as the only method for preservation of the faith. Iran will do all it can to stop the ISIS warriors in their tracks. ISIS will be happy to eradicate the Islamic Republic of Iran. But both will marshal the same set of arguments for the establishment and perpetuation of an Islamic state as well as for the disempowerment of each other in their respective spheres of influence.

In Iraq, for instance, Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and his cohorts will be perfectly happy to replicate the Iranian Vilayat-e-Faqih model of state in Iraq and disenfranchise the Sunni minority. The ISIS will be delighted to establish their model of Islamic state and disenfranchise the Shia majority. Both parties will advance the same arguments to justify and Islamise their brutalities. Creation of a hell here in the name of the hereafter is the fundamental objective of all varieties of Islamism, despite their invocation of justice and divine will in every other sentence they write or speak.

(Shajahan Madampat is a cultural critic and commentator.)

 

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-lost-moral-of-islams-divide/article6134190.ece

Independence will be in jeopardy if parties place creed above country, says Pranab

 

Remembering Dr BR Ambedkar President Pranab Mukherjee pays tribute to the architect of India’s Constitution in New Delhi on Thursday. PTI

New Delhi, September 4:  

Amid the rising chorus of ‘Hindu’ being the cultural identity of all Indians, President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday quoted BR Ambedkar to underline that “it is wrong for the majority to deny the existence of minorities”.

Delivering the BR Ambedkar Memorial Lecture on “Vision of India in 21st Cenury, as Envisaged by Dr Ambedkar”, the President emphasised the nation’s cultural and religious diversity. The Constitution guarantees equal rights to all citizens and prohibits discrimination of all kinds in social relations, he pointed out.

The lecture was organised by the Ambedkar Foundation under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

“Dr Ambedkar believed that protection of minorities and their religion was of paramount importance. Thus, the Constitution gives each person the freedom of faith, religion and worship and gives the minorities freedom to manage their religious affairs. Dr Ambedkar justified such protection on the following grounds: ‘It is wrong for the majority to deny the existence of minorities. It is equally wrong for the minorities to perpetuate themselves. A solution must be found which will serve a double purpose. It must recognise the existence of minorities to start with’,” the President said.

Significantly, the President said Ambedkar had warned that if parties place “creed above country”, India’s independence will be in jeopardy.

“Let me conclude recalling Dr Ambedkar’s words from his address to the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1949 — “In addition to our old enemies in the form of castes and creeds, we are going to have many political parties with diverse and opposing political creeds. Will Indians place the country above their creed or will they place creed above country? I do not know. But this much is certain that if the parties place creed above country, our independence will be put in jeopardy a second time and probably be lost forever,” said the President.

Raging controversy
Mukherjee’s emphasis on this aspect of Ambedkar’s vision for India was made in the wake of a raging controversy over RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s statement, “If inhabitants of England are English, Germany are Germans and USA are Americans then why all inhabitants of Hindustan are not known as Hindus?” The statement was apparently endorsed by Minority Affairs Minister Najma Heptullah.

(This article was published on September 4, 2014)

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/politics/independence-will-be-in-jeopardy-if-parties-place-creed-above-country-says-pranab/article6380333.ece