March 2008 
Year 14    No.129
Controversy


Dreaded words

Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective – the foundation
lecture at the Royal Courts of Justice in London delivered by the archbishop
of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams

BY JAVED ANAND

I think it is a safe bet to say without any fear of contradiction that the archbishop of Canterbury’s attempt to
redefine the relationship between law and conscience would not have been greeted with such an instant, widespread hostile or hysterical response but for the fact that he ventured to utter what for too many people, many Muslims included, has become a dreaded word: Shariah. Two other words from the Islamic lexicon have come to acquire a similar meaning: jihad and fatwa. Who is to blame?

Ask any maulvi and he is sure to tell you that jihad literally means to strive, to struggle. He will also tell you that the greatest jihad in Islam is the struggle against self to become a better human being. And that, yes, jihad in Islam also does mean ‘holy war’ but in Islam only a defensive war against an aggressor is permitted. But for far too many non-Muslims across the globe, jihad is today synonymous with terrorism.

A fatwa is nothing more than an opinion on an important issue from an Islamic perspective, which only a qualified mufti is entitled to issue in response to queries from believers. For example, someone might ask a mufti for an Islamic view on whether it is permissible for a Muslim to eat non-halal meat in a city, state or country where no halal meat is available. A fatwa is not enforceable. What is enforceable is the ruling of a duly appointed kadi in an Islamic state whose job is not to express an opinion (fatwa) but to give a ruling (faisla), just as a judge does in other states. Yet, in the popular perception, fatwa has not only become synonymous with medieval thinking, narrow-mindedness, fanaticism; it is taken to mean a firman that all Muslims are obliged to act upon.

Ask any Indian what readily comes to mind the moment they hear the word fatwa and it is not difficult to anticipate the most likely responses: fatwa to kill Salman Rushdie or Taslima Nasreen, fatwa that rules that if a father-in-law rapes his daughter-in-law she is no longer her husband’s but henceforth her father-in-law’s wife, fatwa against coeducation, fatwa that all forms of photography is prohibited except for essential requirements like a passport or a PAN card.

So it is with Shariah. Shariah is supposed to mean the entire corpus of juridical principles meant to govern various aspects of a Muslim’s life in accordance with the moral, ethical and ritualistic teachings of Islam. In its original meaning, Shariah law must evolve from epoch to epoch based on the universal principles enshrined in the Koran, the life and teachings of the prophet and, when necessary, analogy (qiyas), consensus (ijma) and independent reasoning (ijtihad). But the very mention of the word today conjures up visions in the non-Muslim mind of a Muslim demand for a return to medieval penal codes for offences such as adultery, theft, apostasy, blasphemy: flogging, chopping off a thief’s hands, public hanging, stoning to death.

To return to the question raised earlier, if words such as Shariah, jihad and fatwa have become dreaded words today, who is to blame? Enemies of Islam, Islamophobia is sure to be the pat answer from most Muslims. That is what most of the Urdu press keeps telling its readers day after day. But such 24/7 celebration of victimhood does not help anyone, least of all Muslims. It is easy to point fingers at Islamophobes in the West, Zionists and, in the Indian context, the sangh parivar. But beyond a point the mere peddling of a "phobia of Islamophobia" is no use.

Muslims have to introspect, examine their own role in the ossification and degeneration of a rich religious tradition by voluntarily opting to shut all gateways to the mind for centuries now. They must learn to challenge the false claim that Shariah laws are divine and therefore immutable forever. The universal principles enshrined in the Koran and which form part of the Shariah corpus can legitimately be claimed to be divine, not the interpretation of divine intent by the ulema, however learned, who lived in a bygone epoch. An epoch in which slavery was universal, where the rights of women were mostly unheard of, where the chopping of hands, public floggings and hangings, massacres on a genocidal scale, were all part of the social sensibilities of that age.

Yesterday’s social practice is today considered abhorrent, uncivilised and simply unacceptable. We are by no means living in a perfect world today. The point is that the world has moved on and Muslims have no choice but to move ahead as well. As our special issue of CC ("Winds of Change: Islam and Modernity", November-December 2007) highlighted, the good news is that though nowhere near a "critical mass", a growing number of Muslim theologians, scholars, academics and intellectuals are doing just that. The day they are able to carry the masses with them, it is quite conceivable that words such as fatwa, jihad and Shariah will cease to be dreaded words, at the very least.

 


[ Subscribe | Contact Us | Archives | Khoj | Aman ]
[ Letter to editor  ]

Copyrights © 2002, Sabrang Communications & Publishing Pvt. Ltd.