Through unscrupulous acts of mass terror, Muslim extremism has inadvertently
raised a clamour for democracy, human rights and gender justice among
co-religionists and sown
he seeds of its own destruction
BY JAVED ANAND
Winds of change appear to be sweeping across the
Muslim world. Osama bin Laden and the al-
Qaeda would not, cannot, claim credit to being the founders of this
movement-in-the-making. But it cannot be denied that contrary to their nefarious
intent, their insensate violence has helped jolt the world of Islam out of its
centuries-long moral and intellectual slumber.
On 9/11 a handful of Muslims flew two planes straight into the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The aim: to strike at the very heart of the
sole Superpower’s economic and military might. The result: In retaliation to the
thousands of innocents killed on American soil, Bully Bush unleashes his own
terror machine in Afghanistan and Iraq, killing many more thousands of innocents
and ravaging the lives of millions.
Understandably, American belligerence and hypocrisy continues to
anger people across the world, Muslims included. But the premeditated and
reprehensible massacre of innocents on that tragic September day and elsewhere
since then – Beslan, Spain, Indonesia – by the al-Qaeda and other extremist
outfits have, unwittingly, shaken and shattered the prison gates of the Muslim
mind.
No, no revolution is in sight; Muslim societies are not about to
be turned upside down overnight. Muslims have a long, long way to go in coming
to terms with modern day sensibilities: fundamental freedoms, human rights,
gender justice, non-discrimination, pluralism, democracy. But only a cynic, a
pessimist or a fanatic will deny the myriad signs of change across the Muslim
world. Tentative, uneven, irregular and reversible though it might be, there is
a visible stirring within Muslim-predominant societies – Morocco, Malaysia,
Kuwait, Qatar, as much as among Muslim minorities living in democracies – USA,
Canada, India, Germany. If nothing else, it is the beginning of something.
In the days immediately following 9/11, Muslim clerics, scholars
and politicians expressed shock and horror over the fact that monstrosities such
as 9/11 could be committed in the name of Islam. Statements and articles by them
were published in prestigious international publications under headlines such
as, ‘Islam was hijacked on September 11’, ‘My fatwa against the
fanatics,’ ‘Islam is its own worst enemy’...
The spontaneous outrage soon gave way to serious introspection
and soul search. It is not enough to dismiss or denounce wanton acts of terror
as un-Islamic, wrote some of them. Muslims must ask what in their religious
teaching or tradition inspires some among them to commit such heinous crimes.
They must recognise the sickness that has come to afflict the very soul of
Islam, said Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, a radical
Muslim leader who had earlier championed the "Islamisation" cause.
Even a cursory survey of news headlines indicates that the
introspection, the widespread search for an articulation of Islam that is at
home and in peace with the modern world has led to some significant developments
in the last year or so:
May 19, 2005 (Malaysia/Germany):
In his keynote address on ‘Islam, International Peace and
Security’, at the Bertelsmann Foundation, Berlin, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the
Prime Minister of Malaysia, propagates his newly developed concept of "Islam
Hadhari" ("Civilisational Islam", "Progressive Islam"). His idea, he believes,
could help bridge "the increasing gulf and misunderstanding between the West and
the Muslim world".
"Islam Hadhari promotes tolerance and understanding, moderation
and peace, and certainly, enlightenment. It is entirely consistent with
democracy because it is about living peacefully and respecting each other in
society," he said. Badawi has been vigorously promoting Islam Hadhari both
within Malaysia and among the member countries of the Organisation of the
Islamic Conference (OIC), an association of 57 countries from three continents,
of which he is currently the chairman.
Meanwhile, Islamists across the globe are greatly perturbed over
a not entirely unrelated development. Since his release last year after spending
six years in a Malaysian prison, Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister and
Badawi’s chief potential rival, has become "a darling of the West" for his
promotion of an understanding of Islam that is regarded as ‘moderate’ and
West-friendly. Recognised as a radical Muslim leader in the ’70s, Ibrahim was
inducted by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in 1981 to
implement his "Islamisation policy".
May 16, 2005 (Kuwait):
After years of struggle, Kuwait’s Parliament at long last passes
a law granting women the right to vote and to run in elections.
May 8 (India):
At a crowded press conference in Mumbai called by the Muslim
Women’s Rights Network jointly with other secular women’s groups, Muskan Sheikh
of Hukook-e-Niswaan, tears to shreds the ‘model nikaahnama’
adopted with much fanfare by the "blatantly anti-women and reactionary" All
India Muslim Personal Law Board on May 1. Earlier, the recently formed All India
Muslim Women’s Personal Law Board had dismissed the draft as a toothless ‘‘dua
ki kitab (prayer book)".
March 18 (USA):
For the first time since Islam’s early days, for the first time
ever perhaps, a woman, professor Amina Wadud, leads a mixed-gender group of
around 120 men and women to Friday prayers (imamah) in Manhattan, New
York. At this unprecedented congregation, azaan, the call to namaaz,
too, is given by a woman, Suehyla El-Attar of Atlanta. The much-publicised
"first intifada in a widespread gender insurgency" invites a flood of
fatwas from every trend of thought but also triggers a global debate on the
right of women to lead prayers. (See pages 14-15.)
March 11 (Spain):
The Islamic Commission of Spain, representing 200 or so mostly
Sunni mosques, or about 70 per cent of all mosques in Spain, issues a religious
order declaring Osama bin Laden to have forsaken Islam by backing attacks such
as the Madrid train bombings a year ago. The fatwa, the first of its kind
from anywhere in the Muslim world, is timed for Friday to coincide with
the first anniversary of last year’s attacks, which killed 191 people and were
claimed in the name of al-Qaeda in Europe. At Madrid’s main mosque, worshippers
observe a minute’s silence before Friday prayers, while Morocco’s King Mohammed
attends a wreath-laying ceremony in honour of the victims. (See page 9.)
March (Germany):
Six Islamic groups, accounting for 70 per cent of Germany’s
Muslims, plan to unite under one umbrella to push for having Islam taught in
public schools. The groups want to ensure that Islam can be taught in German in
public schools to better integrate children and prevent misinterpretations. "If
we don’t, the next generation of Muslims will grow up without values, and if
they don’t get their religious education in schools they risk being influenced
by bad interpretations of the Koran," said Nadeem Elyas, president of the
central council of Muslims, after a meeting of Muslim groups in Hamburg last
weekend… One of the things I think is very important for Muslims and Islam in
our times is to teach the next generation of Muslims more about their religion,
show them what’s right from wrong and explain the peaceful message of Islam, he
added. (Source: Al Jazeera)
From a secular perspective, teaching religion in a secular
educational institution may be a debatable issue. Germany’s Muslims, however,
seem to be asking for their children to be taught an Islam that is open to the
full scrutiny of secular authorities.
February 5 (Saudi Arabia):
The Saudi royalty has for decades promoted Wahhabism, a rigid
intolerant version of Islam that according to many Muslims has provided the
breeding ground for Muslim extremism. And the same Saudis who along with the US
were the main sponsors of "Islamic extremism" in the more recent period, host
their first international counter-terrorism conference. Questions are beginning
to be asked about the link between the terrorism that they first nurtured and
now want to fight and the Wahhabi brand of Islam that the Saudi dynasty
proclaimed in their own country and exported across the Islamic world.
Only days after the conference, Riyadh becomes the first city to
vote in the only nationwide elections that have been held since the modern Saudi
kingdom was founded three quarters of a century ago. It is an election where
Saudi women, who hoped to stand as candidates, are even denied the right to
vote. But as one commentator put it, "it’s a precedent, the beginning of
something."
February 2 (Canada):
The Muslim Canadian Congress, a Toronto-based grassroots
organisation, welcomes a proposed legislation that redefines marriage to include
same-sex partners, and urges Muslims and other minority groups to stand in
solidarity with gays and lesbians. "This legislation is not about religion; it
is about fundamental and universal human rights that are a guarantee that all
Canadians, irrespective of their religious or ethnic background, feel part of
the same family," a spokesperson explains. (See page 16.)
February (Qatar):
"Fanaticism is the root of Muslim backwardness," declares Dr.
Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, former dean of the faculty of Shari’a and Law at the
University of Qatar, in a long interview first published in a Qatar daily. Much
of what else Al-Ansari has to say in his two-part interview would have been
considered absolute heresy not long ago. (See page 13.)
January (USA):
At an ‘Islamic Art Conference’ held in Oakland, California,
Marvin X, a distinguished poet, playwright and essayist of the Black Arts
Movement, challenges the fellow artists present: "Be revolutionary and, yes,
disobedient. To hell with those who desire to suppress Muslim art, they are the
backward ones, they are the evil ones and must be opposed by, yes, any means
necessary."
Lamenting the fact that "so much that goes for Islam is ancient
and primitive," he asks, "How can we possess "supreme wisdom" yet have nothing,
behave as spiritual slaves to any storefront Imam with a rote memory of
Al-Koran?" Marvin X ends with an impassioned plea: "Let a Martin Luther Muslim
arise to destroy idols of ignorance and suppression of creativity. Yes, let
everything praise Allah, from the flute to the lute, from the dancer to the
poet."
December 2004 (Canada):
The Canadian Council of Muslim Women (CCMW) launches a staunch
campaign challenging an official proposal to allow Muslims in Ontario province
to use their religious law in the settling of family and inheritance disputes.
(It’s somewhat like Canadian Muslims having their own family laws, as Indian
Muslims do.) CCMW argues that this would in practice work to the detriment of
Muslim women and take away from them the rights they enjoy under the Canadian
Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
March 2004 (Malaysia):
In his campaign for the general elections in Malaysia, Prime
Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi proclaims that Islam, which has come to be
associated with violence and extremism, was in urgent need of reformulation. His
‘Islam Hadhari’ (‘Progressive Islam’) electoral plank ensures an unprecedented
90 per cent seats to his coalition while his opposition, the fundamentalist
Islamic Party (PAS), is routed.
February 2004 (Morocco):
Muslim majority Morocco enacts a new family code that makes
women equal partners in marriage and family life. The new code rejects the
notion that the husband is head of the family and that women are mere underlings
in need of guidance and protection. Significantly, every change in the law is
justified - chapter and verse - from the Koran, and from the examples and
traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. And every change has the consent of
religious scholars. Even Islamist political organisations in the country welcome
the change.
Post 9/11 (Indonesia):
If in Malaysia the impetus for reform within Islam comes from
the top, Indonesia is taking the bottom-up route, says Pakistan-born,
London-based Ziauddin Sardar, columnist and author of several books on Islam.
According to him, the drive for change in Indonesia post 9/11 has been led by
the Muhammadiyah, an intellectuals-led body and Nahdlatul Ulema, an organisation
of religious scholars. Being the two largest and most influential Muslim
organisations in the country, they command between 60 and 80 million followers
in mosques, schools and universities throughout Indonesia. Also engaged in a
similar task is the newly formed Liberal Islam Network, whose membership
consists largely of young Muslims.
All three organisations, says Sardar, have two main concerns:
one, de-emphasis on the formality and symbolism that has drained Islam of its
ethical and humane dimension; two, separation of the formal links between Islam
(Shariah) and politics.
In short, the clamour for change within the world of Islam,
which is being articulated in a variety of ways and at different levels, is
spread across countries and continents. If the State is the primary actor in
Muslim-majority countries like Malaysia, Morocco and Kuwait, Muslim
organisations commanding the allegiance of millions are in the forefront in
Indonesia. And in countries where the Muslims constitute a minority – India,
America, Canada – the voices for change are as yet those of a "minority within a
minority". The common factor uniting such diverse initiatives is the quest for
change.
As is only to be expected, radical change, or the demand for it
at the ground level, necessarily goes hand-in-hand with the battle of ideas. In
the context of the Islam and democracy debate, and given constraints of space,
here is some limited food for thought from two contributors to the process: an
Islamic scholar, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, and the activist-intellectual,
Ziauddin Sardar
An-Na’im is a professor at Emory University School of Law, USA.
While intellectuals and scholars normally concern themselves with the
bipartite relationship between religion and State, An-Na’im puts forward a
theory of the tripartite relationship between religion, State and
politics. His is an interesting theory in so far as it puts forward an "Islamic
argument" for the necessity of a clear separation between religion and
State that is sure to make the ulema uncomfortable. But it also supports
an active role for Islam in politics that is not likely to make many
secularists happy.
An-Na’im’s fundamental argument against an ‘Islamic State’ based
on the Shariah is simple. For him, as for many other Muslims, both fiqh
(Islamic jurisprudence) and the Shariah (Islamic principles) being the
product of human interpretation of the Koran, and the Sunnah (or
Hadith), in a particular historical context, are open to risks of human error
and influence of ideological or political bias. In other words, the Shariah can
in no way be considered divine. The administrative and legislative wings of any
State claiming to rule according to the Shariah necessarily pick and choose from
the vast and complex Shariah corpus. Since a State expresses the political will
of the ruling elite, "whatever is enacted and enforced by the State is the
political will of the ruling elite, not the religious law of Islam as such."
An "Islamic State", for An-Na’im, is not only conceptually
untenable but also highly undesirable: "It is dangerous to confer the sanctity
of Islam on the present State with its extensive power to control and regulate
far more of the daily lives of citizens and communities than was ever possible."
But at the same time, he argues strongly in favour of a
continued and active role of Islam in politics. As Muslims derive their ethical
principles and social values from them, the Shariah principles will and must
remain in the realm of individual and collective practice of the community as a
matter of freedom of religion and belief, and the right to self-determination of
Muslims, An-Na’im argues.
In An-Na’im’s idea of "the religious neutrality of the State",
the Shariah as such must not be enforced by the State, but nor must it be
excluded as a possible source of public policy and legislation. How is
this delicate balance to be maintained? By making any proposed Shariah-inspired
legislation "subject to the fundamental constitutional/human rights of all
citizens, men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims equally and without
discrimination". An-Na’im is the first to agree that for this to work in
practice, certain aspects of the Shariah would have to be reformed,
reformulated.
But reform of the Shariah is no easy task, Ziauddin Sardar
argues in a thought-provoking article he wrote about two years ago. In it he
diagnoses the freezing of Islamic history and the deep-rooted ossification of
the Muslim mind as a consequence of the three self-inflicted "metaphysical
catastrophes" compounded by the malaise of "endless reduction".
The three metaphysical catastrophes: the elevation of the
Shariah to the level of the divine, with the consequent removal of agency from
the believers, and the equation of Islam with the State.
By mistakenly treating man-made Shariah as something divine and
therefore immutable, the Muslim sets himself a trap from which he can never
escape. If all laws have been enunciated for all time centuries ago, a Muslim
has no need to think. And once the State is accepted as the guardian of Shariah,
tyranny is the only possible outcome.
The endless reductions:
"In early Islam, an alim was anyone who acquired ilm,
or knowledge, described in a broad sense. So all learned men, scientists as well
as philosophers, scholars as well as theologians, constituted the ulema
(plural of alim). But after the ‘gates of ijtihad’ were closed
during the Abbasid era (centuries ago), ilm was increasingly reduced to
religious knowledge and the ulema 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 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 reign supreme in the Muslim world."
"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 transposed to read ‘my Ummah right or wrong’... 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. Its other
connotations, including personal struggle, intellectual endeavour, and social
construction have all but evaporated."
If metaphysical catastrophes and endless reduction have together
"transformed the cherished tenants of Islam into instruments of militant
expediency and moral bankruptcy", how is Muslim society to regenerate itself?
"It is now obvious that Islam itself has to be rethought, idea
by idea," argues Sardar. "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… 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 Shariah, 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."
Sardar’s argument about rethinking Islam, idea by idea, includes
a radical redefinition of the notion of the Ummah. For the now reformed
Anwar Ibrahim, 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," Sardar concludes.
Muslims clearly have miles to go. While there are visible signs
of change on the ground, the obvious roadblocks to the Muslim mind are also easy
to see. If change is palpable in Indonesia and Malaysia, Muslims of South Asia
(India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, among others) have a long, long way to go. If
anything, while Pakistan still seems poised on the precipice, Bangladesh appears
headed towards the extremist abyss.
On a different level altogether, the Bush administration is sure
to make every Muslim reformists job that much more difficult. Having taken it
upon themselves to bring democracy to the world, a concept paper prepared by an
American think tank, RAND Corporation, divides the world of Islam into Good
Muslims (‘Modern’, ‘Secular’), Bad Muslims (‘Traditional’) and the Worst Muslims
(‘Extremists’). The idea is to cultivate, support, patronise, utilise the first
three to fulfil two American objectives: one, to marginalise, uproot the
extremists; two, to ensure that reformed Islam is America-friendly.
And since the American administration shows no sign of reforming
itself, in addition to the uphill task that they face in any case, modern and
secular Muslims run the additional hazard of being maligned as "American
agents".
In the long march that lies ahead, very many obstacles remain to
be overcome. But for now perhaps we should draw comfort from the fact that,
Mashallah, a critical mass of Muslims has already hit the road.