“Had your Lord wished, that all those who are on the earth would be believers, would you then force people until they become faithful?”                              
(Quran: Chapter 10, Verse 99.)

The verse from the Quran clearly discourages the use of force in the process of calling people towards faith and preaching religion. This rejection is equivalent to accepting the freedom of an individual to agree and accept or to disagree and leave religion.

Blasphemy means a speech that causes injury or speaking evil. Initially, blasphemy was understood in Islamic tradition as attacks on core ideas and symbols, mainly God and Prophet.

In Quran, the term equivocal for blasphemy is “Sabb”. Sabb-Allah or Sabb-Al Rasul means to abuse God or the messenger. All utterances that express contempt for Allah, his law, attributes, commands or prohibitions and scoffing at Muhammad or any of the prophets are considered as Sabb.

The word “Sabb” comes twice in Quran, in verse 108 of Chapter 6,

“Do not abuse (La Tasubbu) those whom they invoke besides Allah, lest they should abuse (Tasubbu) Allah out of hostility without any knowledge. That is how to every people We have made their conduct seem decorous/beautiful (Zeena)”

In this verse, there is no mention of corporeal punishment for blasphemy. Even in the case of apostasy, Quran in Chapter 2, Verse 217 says,

“Those whoever if you turn away (Yurtad) from his religion and dies faithless. They are the ones whose works have failed in this world and Hereafter.”

All the punishments if we look at Quran are non-physical and not hudud punishments. The approach that Quran follows, especially towards its opponents is encouraging tolerance and perseverance among Muslims.

In Hadith literature, we do have reports that contain references to blasphemy and punishing them. One of the famous examples is Ka’ab al-Ashraf. An in-depth examination of this Hadith reveals that he was not just charged with blasphemy but with extensive anti-Muslim activity, slander of the Prophet and plot to kill the prophet. He was perceived to wage war against the Muslim community.

 The present concept of blasphemy as an offence has been developed by Muslim jurists in the post Prophetic period. Blasphemy against Prophet was considered a greater legal offence than blasphemy against God. Since the prophet had passed away and was not able to defend himself, it was thought that it was the responsibility of the community (Ummah) to guard his honour by imposing punishment.

It stemmed from the idea that it was a violation of the “right of humans” (Huquq ul Abd). Since it is the right of people and not God, there can be no repentance by itself.

Abdullah Saeed, Tariq Ramdhan and Mohsen Kadivar are some contemporary scholars of Islam who present a different approach to understanding these hadiths. According to them, critical analysis and hermeneutical reading of these Hadith reveals that most of them have a weak chain of transmission and others have been taken out of context or the proper context has been ignored.

In Islamic history, blasphemy and apostasy have been used both to suppress thoughts and debate and to harass religious minorities, both inside and outside Islam. They were used as vicarious arguments to serve political and economic interests or to settle scores. Muslim rulers in the post-Prophetic era used/ abused this law to strengthen and consolidate their position by charging people and groups who oppose them as apostates and rebels (Baghi). Similar to the way the law of sedition is used in today’s politics

The accusation of blasphemy or apostasy extends beyond the law and judiciary by putting people at risk of extrajudicial killings whether in jail or on the outside. It also tends to elevate all critique of religious knowledge to blasphemy. Attacking or punishing someone just because you think that they have insulted or criticised what you consider sacred is neither in line with the teachings of the Quran nor the Sunnah of Prophets but the Sunnah(way) of Pre-Islamic Arab Jahiliyah and the oppressors like Namrud.

Quran condemns the elites of Quraysh who decided to captivate, kill or expel Prophet Muhammad. They did so because they believed that the message of Islam was an insult to their gods and the tradition of their forefathers.

Similarly, Namrud had ordered Prophet Abraham should be burned in the fire. Namrud and other priests considered Abraham’s way of preaching and denying the lordship of Namrud as an insult to their Gods.

Stabbing a 75-year unarmed old man in an education centre is bereft of any Zeena and can never be in line with the themes of peace, justice and humanity prescribed by the Quran.

 In conclusion, I would like to convey my message to the author of Satanic verses in the form of a quote by Voltaire,

“I may not agree with what you have to say, But I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

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The 1979 Iranian revolution wasn’t purely Islamic but the clerics, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, made it so to consolidate their power. BockoPix/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

With Iran’s ruling clergy already preparing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, it may be too late to question whether or not the revolution was in fact Islamic. What we can do, at least, is explore the revolution’s degree of Islamicness.

In Iran, like elsewhere in the world, often competing utopian political visions shaped the political landscape of the previous century. Marxism, nationalism and liberalism all played important roles in the 1979 revolution. Yet it was later branded “Islamic” with such insistence that this eventually became its sole adjective.

Most Iranians were religious, which positioned the clergy far ahead of any other political group in being able to mobilise the masses. The clergy benefited enormously from their highly effective religious network, which was both far reaching and fully under their control. By that time, the Pahlavi regime had severely weakened the organising capacities of Iran’s other political groups.
 

The consolidation of power

After telling reporters and other revolutionary leaders ‘the religious dignitaries do not want to rule’ in 1978, Ayatollah Khomeini ensured the clerics’ rule was unchallenged once in power. Wikipedia

After claiming a dominant post-revolution position, the clergy under then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini exploited their irreproachable reputation and religious bond with the masses to eliminate their rivals and consolidate their power. They converted Iran’s religious networks into permanent political platforms.

Mosques and other religious spaces and occasions were at the forefront of their propaganda machinery. Mosques were also – and still are – used as polling stations during elections.

The ruling clergy coupled the term “Islamic” with the revolution, calling it a “regime of truth”, to use Foucault’s terminology. More importantly, they impeded the emergence of a non-religious alternative to their peculiar political system. Over the past 39 years, no secular political group has been able to mount a formidable challenge to the Islamic Republic.

Instead, other religious forces have challenged the ruling clergy. They have done so both on the level of practical politics and by way of introducing viable alternatives to the ideal of the Islamic state.

The impetus for Iran’s most significant periods of political unrest in recent decades can be traced to the Islamic reformists. Examples include the reformist movement from 1997 until 2005, and the Green Movement, which emerged after the disputed 2009 elections.

The Green Movement brought the regime to the brink of collapse, and its religious ties were undeniable. Its leaders, Mir Hussin Mousavi and Mehdi Karubi – who are still under house arrest – are both religious figures who have always aligned with the Islamists. The colour green is a religious symbol, hence the name of the movement.

The leaders of the Green Movement, whose supporters are pictured at rally in June 2009, are still under house arrest. Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

A new politico-religious discourse is emerging that offers a viable alternative to the Islamic Republic. The Green Movement must still be understood within the broader “Islamist” school of thought, as it promotes a political role for religion. It is, however, unique in that it envisions this role as part of a democratic polity.
 

Islam lacks a blueprint for government

The reformist movement amounts to a direct backlash against the ideal of the Islamic state. It targets the foundational pillars of the Shiʿi model of the state, which is based upon Khomeini’s doctrine of wilāyat-i faqīh.

The reformists intend to strip away the ruling clergy’s proclaimed religious legitimacy. They maintain that Islam does not specify a blueprint for political matters and explicitly avoids providing economic, political, or policy prescriptions. The Qurʾān and many Ḥadīths support the notion that humans have the capacity to determine appropriate solutions for their worldly problems.

A sign at a June 2009 rally in Paris, France, bears the motto used in the Green Movement protests in Iran. Hugo/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Thus, reformists argue that Islam should be actualised in politics through the political contributions of believers rather than the political leadership of the clergy.

Islam does not stipulate a model political system. This makes it impossible to extract the notion of democratic government from Islamic teachings.

However, one could argue that democracy is an appropriate political system for the Muslim world, based on human reasoning. For example, Mohsen Kadivar asserts:
 

Democracy is the least erroneous approach to the politics of the world. (Please note that least erroneous does not mean perfect, or even error free.) Democracy is a product of reason, and the fact that it has first been put to use in the West does not preclude its utility in other cultures – reason extends beyond the geographical boundaries. One must adopt a correct approach, regardless of who came up with the idea.

Divine sovereignty and Sharīʿa

The religious backlash has been particularly focused on refuting two interconnected claims that form the existential grounding of the Islamic state. These are the claims of divine sovereignty and the necessity of implementing Sharīʿa, or Islamic law.
Iran’s ruling clergy argue that the divine right to political leadership rests not only with the Prophet Mohammad and Shiʿi’s Infallible Imāms, but also with Islamic jurists in today’s world. According to Khomeini:
 

God has conferred upon government in the present age the same powers and authority that were held by the Most Noble Messenger and the Imāms, with respect to equipping and mobilising armies, appointing governors and officials, and levying taxes and expending them for the welfare of the Muslims. Now, however, it is no longer a question of a particular person; government devolves instead upon one who possesses the qualities of knowledge and justice.

This assertion could be questioned on various levels. First and foremost, it offers a problematic reading of Islamic history. It ignores the reality that the Prophet Mohammad’s governance was a historical occurrence as opposed to a part of his divine mission.

In the same vein, many Iranian religious reformists repudiate the divine source of political authority, not only in the present, but also for the Prophet and Infallible Imāms. These interpretations of the revolution reject the possibility of claiming any sort of divinity in the political realm. This empowers believers to manage their political lives based on their collective rational reasoning.

The second major claim is that Islam is a political religion because Sharīʿa law encompasses important socio-political dimensions. Its proponents maintain that Sharīʿa ought to be implemented to its full extent, thus requiring political leadership by the clergy.

Once in government, Khomenei himself rationalised giving priority to political interests over religious considerations. Wikimedia

This was a founding maxim of Khomeini’s doctrine of wilāyat-i faqīh. But he revised this when he began running a modern state.

Soon after the revolution, Khomeini realised that implementing the many components of Sharīʿa would interfere with the basic tasks of government. In other words, he concluded that full compliance with Sharīʿa law would make it impossible for a state to effectively carry out its core functions and responsibilities.

His response to this predicament was to prioritise political interests over religious considerations. He went so far as to declare Sharīʿa as secondary to governing:
 

A government in the form of the God-given, absolute mandate was the most important of the divine commandments and has priority over all derivative divine commandments … [it is] one of the primary commandments of Islam and has priority over all derivative commandments, even over prayer, fasting and pilgrimage to Mecca.

This was conceptualised as a Shiʿi jurisprudential principle called Fiqh al-maṣlaḥa (expediency-based jurisprudence). It establishes that a state is regarded as Islamic if the head of state is a jurist, a walī-yi faqīh, regardless of whether the state enforces Sharīʿa and Islamic precepts.
 

Open to the charge of exploiting Islam

Expediency-based jurisprudence leaves the fate of Sharīʿa ordinances, and by extension the entire religion of Islam, to the “personal” understanding of the ruling jurist. Unsurprisingly, it has been challenged for exploiting religion.

Critics say that decisions based on a rational assessment of the circumstances should not be tagged as “Islamic”. Attaching a religious tag to decisions made by the absolute authority of one person, who is not immune to mistakes and failures, will render religion responsible for policy mistakes and failures.

Ultimately, the lived experience of the government born out of the 1979 revolution proved detrimental to Islam. It led to the disillusionment of some Islamists who wished to emancipate religion from the state. As such, reformist discourse failed to propose a tangible alternative to the model of the Islamic state. This, in turn, could partially explain the resilience of the Islamic state in Iran.

Nevertheless, we should not overlook the powerful role of religious backlash in disarming the ruling clergy and delegitimising the theological foundation of the Islamic state. It remains the most formidable challenge to Iran’s ruling clergy to date.

Still, the possibility of a major shift in the country’s political landscape is more complicated and depends on factors far beyond religion-state relations.
 

Naser Ghobadzadeh, Senior lecturer, National School of Arts, Australian Catholic University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Activists protesting against the recently banned triple divorce. AP Photo/Altaf Qadri

As a scholar who has conducted research among Muslim communities in India, I have seen firsthand how the abuse of this practice resulted in devastating consequences for Muslim women in India. In recent years, some men, for example, were divorcing their wives over Skype or a phone app. Many women found themselves abandoned, without any access to financial resources and in some cases custody of their children.

India came to this decision late after predominantly Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia and several Arab nations had outlawed the practice in the 20th century. And controversially so. Even now, perhaps most fundamentally, the question remains – what difference will it actually make?
 

Divorce in Islam

Divorce in Islam is regulated by a number of considerations and responsibilities. According to the principles of sharia, or Islamic law, the recommended practices are to have two witnesses to the decision to end the marriage, hear both sides, allow time to reflect and reconcile, and carefully handle matters of property.

The process is not cut and dried, but is instead based on mediation, facilitated by an Islamic judge. These judges try to abide by principles of Islamic law and take into account the unique circumstances and life situations of all parties. For example, in some divorces women retain the “mehr,” which is the money the husband agrees to gift the bride at the time of marriage. In others, she is expected to return the gift upon divorce.

Still, the procedures differ significantly between men and women. Men have the right to declare “talaq” and thus end the marriage, although they are required to take three months before finalizing their decision.

When a Muslim woman wants to initiate a divorce based on Islamic law, she generally must turn to an Islamic judge or imam (leader) to assist her if the husband refuses his consent.

There are many possible justifications under Islamic law: A woman might claim her husband prevents her from being pious or that he has abandoned or neglected her. It could also be that the husband is impotent, has other health issues or is in prison. I have also seen divorce granted on the grounds of cruelty. Islamic judges can even annul the marriage on certain grounds.

In sum, women have ways to seek divorce under Islamic law. But unlike men, they cannot unilaterally make a binding decision to end the marriage.

In the debates that led up to the Indian Supreme Court ruling many Muslim activists and intellectuals argued that the practice of instant divorce by the husband did not exist in the Quran and is therefore not a practice that should fall under religious freedom. The majority opinion on the court accepted this argument that triple talaq, in which the word “talaq” is said all at once, is not a truly Islamic practice.

A lawyer speaks with the media following the divorce verdict in New Delhi. Reuters/Adnan Abidi
 

Status of religious minorities

So why did it take so long to rule against this practice in India?

While India is a secular country, the rights of minority communities such as Muslims and Christians to practice their religious laws in matters of marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody and adoption are constitutionally protected.

In view of this protection, any attempt by the government to interfere in religious law and community matters is viewed as a violation of minority rights and a threat to freedom. For example, in 1985, when a Muslim woman, Shah Bano, filed a petition in court demanding the right to alimony from her divorced husband, the case became highly political and controversial. Muslim leaders demanded that the government not interfere in “personal” and religious matters.

Today, Muslims have even more cause to worry about interference in their communities. Since the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014, the Hindu nationalist movement has become emboldened. Hindu nationalism promotes the political domination of “ancient” Hindu culture over all other cultures in India. For example, in the name of protecting the sacredness of cows and Hindu tradition, there have been many cow vigilante groups, who have attacked minority Muslims for eating beef.

For this reason, even progressive legal changes like banning instant divorce were viewed by some Muslim leaders as one small step in a larger attack on religious minorities.
 

Where are Muslim women’s voices?

The other issue is who speaks on behalf of the Muslim community. Muslims constitute 14 percent of India’s population and are enormously diverse. However, it is the self-appointed Muslim leaders who have been the most vocal on the issue, saying that the government should not intervene in Muslim family laws.

India does not demand official representatives of the Muslim community, as do some other countries, such as France and Italy.

Consequently, Muslim women’s groups have been struggling to be heard in these debates.
 

Condition of Muslim women in India

For many reasons, it is not clear how much the court ruling will improve women’s overall lives.

Divorce appears to be lower among Muslim women than among women of other religious communities. The divorce rate (based on the number of divorces per 1000 married women) is just over 5 percent for Muslim women, lower than the rate for Christian and Buddhist women.

Moreover, as women’s rights lawyer Flavia Agnes argued, there have already been a number of legal cases that effectively declared instant divorce invalid.

Muslim women in India are dealing with a large number of challenges. AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal

It is also important to note that Muslim women are dealing with a large number of challenges. These include widespread poverty, lack of access to education and an illiteracy rate of almost 40 percent in urban areas and over 50 percent in rural areas. (These percentages can vary widely across India.) Muslim women have the lowest rate of primary school completion compared to other groups, at 71 percent in urban areas and 48 percent in rural areas.

Arbitrary divorce is therefore only one of the injustices Indian Muslim women face.

Furthermore, while many Muslim women may want and need internal reforms in their communities, they are uncomfortable in courts and also have reasons to distrust the state. There are cases of police abuses against Muslims, with rates of incarceration being higher compared to other communities.

In my own research among low-income Muslim communities in the Indian city of Hyderabad, people did not think government intervention would really improve their lives. They also feared it would undermine their religious autonomy.

Often, women look for local solutions before approaching civil courts. In one low-income neighborhood I studied, a group of activists worked with Islamic judges to help women in situations of marital crisis or domestic violence secure a divorce or claim their financial rights in the aftermath of divorce. Activists told me that developing supportive relationships with these judges resulted in faster, easier and less costly resolution of family conflicts than going through civil courts.

While legal advancement is important and ensuring fairness in divorce is something to celebrate, it is but one small step toward a greater vision of gender justice.
 

Z. Fareen Parvez, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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It is now obvious that Islam itself has to be re-thought, 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.

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 dynamic 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 contexts 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 of Afghanistan. When narrow adherence to fiqh, to the dictates of this or that school of thought, whether it has any relevance to the 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 except 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 particular Jamaat-e-Islami (both the 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 the 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 altar 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 all its 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 Muslim 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 ‘ulema, 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 ‘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 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 reign 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 ‘ulema, dominate Muslim societies and circumscribe them with fanaticism and absurdly reductive logic.
 

Numerous other concepts have gone through a 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 transposed 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 bandied 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 verse 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 extreme of behaviour. And the Prophet’s own appearance, his beard and clothes, 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 tenets 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 at and shaping the world, as a domain of peaceful civic culture, a participatory endeavour, and a holistic mode of knowing, being and doing. (June 2002). 
 

Archived from Communalism Combat, February 2000. Year 9  No, 84, Forum

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In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate
someone recently in formed me that half the terrorist organizations officially listed on some or another "terrorist watch website," were Muslim. Though Islamic law does not countenance terrorism or suicide of any sort, and I know these organizations represent an extreme splinter of an extreme splinter of Islam, I did not find the statistic particularly shocking.
 

Rather, if in the last fifty years world governments like the United States and Britain have somehow convinced themselves that it is morally acceptable to kill, starve, and maim civilians of other countries in order to persuade their governments to do something, it would be surprising if this conviction did not somehow percolate down to the dispossessed, the hopeless, the aggrieved, and the powerless of every religion and ethnic group in the world. It looks as if it has.
 

We Americans are not bombing people, young and old, whose lives, when they survive, are brutally interrupted by the loss of an arm or a leg, or a father, or a son, or a mother, or a house that the family saved for years to build. We are too civilized for that. Rather, we bomb Iraq. We bomb Sudan. We bomb Southern Lebanon. We bomb "Palestinian positions." We don’t cause the tens of thousands of birth defective and mentally retarded babies with the chemical mayhem and ten–year famine we are currently paying for in Iraq: We are "imposing sanctions."

We don’t kill actual human beings with all the explosives we are dumping on these countries. We are killing generic Iraqis, generic Sudanis, generic Palestinians. It sounds like we may now have to kill some generic Afghanis. And now the shock of all shocks, the devastation of all devastations: some crazy people this past month decided to kill a lot of generic Americans. What on earth made them think it was morally acceptable to kill people who hadn’t committed any crime, who were not combatants, and were not killed in self–defence?

The answer, I apprehend, is not to be found in Islam, or in any religion or morality, but in the fact that there are fashions in atrocities and in the rhetoric used to dress them up. Unfortunately these begin to look increasingly like our own fashions and sound increasingly like our own rhetoric, reheated and served up to us. The terrorists themselves, in their own minds, were doubtless not killing secretaries, janitors, and firemen. That would be too obscene. Rather, they were "attacking America."

The attack has been condemned, as President Bush has noted, by "Muslim scholars and clerics" across the board, and indeed by all people of decency around the world. I have read Islamic law with scholars, and know that it does not condone either suicide or killing non–combatants. But what to do about the crime itself?

The solution being proposed seems to be a technological one. We will highlight these people on our screens, and press delete. If we cannot find the precise people, we will delete others like them, until everyone else gets the message. We’ve done it lots of times. The problem with this is that it is morally wrong, and will send a clear confirmation — if more is needed beyond the shoot-em-ups abroad of the last decades that show our more or less complete disdain for both non–white human life and international law — that there is no law between us and other nations besides the law of the jungle.

People like these attackers, willing to kill themselves to devastate others, are not ordinary people. They are desperate people. What has made them so is not lunacy, or religion, but the perception that there is no effective legal recourse to stop crimes against the civilian peoples they identify with. Our own and our clients’ killing, mutilating, and starving civilians are termed "strikes," "pre-emptive attacks," "raiding the frontiers," and "sanctions" — because we have a standing army, print our own currency, and have a press establishment and other trappings of modern statehood. Without them, our actions would be pure "terrorism."

“If in the last 50 world governments like the US and Britain have somehow convinced themselves that it is morally acceptable to kill, starve, and maim civilians of other countries in order to persuade their governments to do something, it would be surprising if this conviction did not somehow percolate down to the dispossessed, the hopeless, the aggrieved, and the powerless of every religion and ethnic group in the world. It looks as if it has”.

Two wrongs do not make a right. They only make two wrongs. I think the whole moral discourse has been derailed by our own rhetoric in recent decades. Terrorism must be repudiated by America not only by words but by actions, beginning with its own. As ‘Abd al–Hakim Winter asks, "Are the architects of policy sane in their certainty that America can enrage large numbers of people, but contain that rage forever through satellite technology and intrepid double agents?" I think we have to get back to basics and start acting as if we knew that killing civilians is wrong.

As it is, we seem to have convinced a lot of other people that it is right, among them some of the more extreme elements of the contemporary Wahhabi sect of Muslims, including the members of the Bin Laden network, whom the security agencies seem to be pointing their finger at for this crime. The Wahhabi sect, which has not been around for more than two and a half centuries, has never been part of traditional Sunni Islam, which rejects it and which it rejects.

Orthodox Sunnis, who make up the vast majority of Muslims, are neither Wahhabis nor terrorists, for the traditional law they follow forbids killing civilian non–combatants to make any kind of point, political or otherwise. Those who have travelled through North Africa, Turkey, Egypt, or the Levant know what traditional Muslims are like in their own lands. Travellers find them decent, helpful, and hospitable people, and feel safer in Muslim lands than in many places, such as Central America, for example, or for that matter, Central Park.

On the other hand, there will always be publicists who hate Muslims, and who for ideological or religious reasons want others to do so. Where there is an ill–will, there is a way. A fifth of humanity are Muslims, and if to err is human, we may reasonably expect Muslims to err also, and it is certainly possible to stir up hatred by publicizing bad examples. But if experience is any indication, the only people convinced by media pieces about the inherent fanaticism of Muslims will be those who don’t know any.

Muslims have nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to hide, and should simply tell people what their scholars and religious leaders have always said: first, that the Wahhabi sect has nothing to do with orthodox Islam, for its lack of tolerance is a perversion of traditional values; and second, that killing civilians is wrong and immoral.

And we Americans should take the necessary measures to get the ship of state back on a course that is credible, fair, and at bottom at least moral in our dealings with the other peoples of the world. For if our ideas of how to get along with other nations do not exceed the morality of action–thriller destruction movies, we may well get more action than we paid for.

(Excerpted from an article by the writer accessible on www.masud.co.uk/)

Nuh Ha Mim Keller's English translation of ‘Umdat al–Salik [The Reliance of the Traveller] (1250 pp., Sunna Books, 1991) is the first Islamic legal work in a European language to receive the certification of al-Azhar, the Muslim world’s oldest institution of higher learning. He also possesses ijazas or "certificates of authorisation" in Islamic jurisprudence from sheikhs in Syria and Jordan.

Archived from Communalism Combat, October 2001 Year 8  No. 72, Cover Story 5

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Mujhe sehl ho gaieen manzilein/voh hava ke rukh bhi badal gaye
(My journey has eased/ direction of winds have changed). Lines from Majrooh Sultanpuri

For the first time, exactly a month ago, Muslim women were invited by the All  India Muslim Personal Law  Board (MPLB) to a conference on the ‘Genuine Problems of Muslim Women and their Solutions’. The venue was the engineering faculty of Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Tension between the MPLB and various women’s groups had been brewing for a few years. This was reflected from time to time in press statements by both parties on various issues pertaining to Muslim women. Members of the MPLB were always seen by women as the orthodox face of Islam who would never permit women to own their own patch of sunlight.

Dr. Hasina Hashia, who coordinated the event on behalf of the MPLB, is one of its fifteen women members. The rest of the hundred and forty members are male. Among the audience there were women from all over the country, representing more than 40 NGOs. The hall began to fill; there were a few women in hijab, most of them were not. Half a dozen women members of the MPLB were also present. Women and men sat sharply divided, on either side of the aisle; the same division was evident on the stage. Interesting that the ‘women’s section’ was bang in front of the stage while the ‘men’s section’ was closer to the hall, but on the stage the setting was reversed. The men squarely occupied  centre–stage while the women were squeezed into the far corner. 

For me this was a much awaited and longed–for moment. As member of the National Commission for Women, I had toured the length and breadth of the country, holding Public Hearings with Muslim women in the gullies and mohallas of districts and tehsils. The findings of this survey had been published as a report on the status of Muslim women entitled Voice of the Voiceless. Having actually captured their voices as they deposed before us, there were some conclusions and recommendations which we addressed first and foremost to the Muslim Personal Law Board, then to all levels of government and finally to  civil society. This conference was the first time that the very members of the Board who we had so far only addressed through the print media, had actually sat down to listen to us.

Some ground rules were laid at the very outset by Qazi Mujahidul Islam Qasmi, chairman of the MPLB. First, that this meeting was not about codification of Muslim law, second, that this meeting was not to ban triple talaaq, and third, that this meeting was not to approve the standard Nikahnama. Two other expectations were placed on the table; first, that this was not a time for mahaaz aarai (confrontation) and second, that it was not a case of ‘who wins, who loses’ but a case of finding solutions to problems. 

Within this framework, discussions had to be held and some consensus hammered out in the next two days. Women were not fariq(opponents) they were rafiq (friends) and all problems had to be solved in the light of shariat because shariat gives women adl (justice) as well as masaavaat (equality).

The next two days were structured around sessions at which women presented the issues pertaining to nikaah, mehr, dowry, inheritance, talaaq, khula and maintenance. After each session one male member of the MPLB offered response on behalf of the Board. At the end there was an open session in the form of a Public Hearing. The conference ended with a declaration which delineated the future course of action for all parties.

What is the net result of this endeavour? This question has been raised often in the last month by different parties. Some have made public statements that it has added up to a big zero because the MPLB has ‘given’ nothing to the women. No improvement has been promised on the matter of triple talaaq or standard nikaahnama or codification of Muslim law. The feeling among some women’s groups is that they have once again been short–changed by the Board. These feelings were expressed on the floor of the conference as well as in media interviews which followed. Some groups, however, felt that there was a major breakthrough in the deadlock, a breakthrough which needs to be welcomed and put to work. On April 7 and 8, 2001 history was made by a courageous contingent of Muslim women and top ranking ulema from all over the country.

Let it be said for both sides that it is quite easy to be disgruntled and show annoyance. It takes much more to understand the other’s difficulty and help him/her overcome it. During the conference, some ulema showed very little empathy for the women who had travelled long distances to air their problems and demand solutions. Some women showed no understanding for the genuine problems of the maulanas who had taken considerable risk in calling this meeting. These hard-line postures were evident in various incidents which erupted throughout the two days.

About one thing let us be clear. It was not easy for the MPLB to have called this meeting. All shades and degrees had to be convinced before the conference was announced. But having once opened the road to dialogue there is absolutely no going back. The very fact that we all sat together for two days made the unspoken tension between women and the ulema disappear to an extent. 

As Hasina Khan of Awaaz–i-Niswan said to the media, “we felt we could talk to them even on a personal level”. Or Hasanath Mansoor of FEMWOB Bangalore who said, “The atmosphere of suspicion has reduced to some extent”. At the end of the day it was felt that strident and belligerent postures taken by either side serve no practical purpose. They best suit the political parties and not people who are genuinely concerned about solving problems. 

The women and the maulanas also discovered that they are on the same side of the issue. At the meeting they agreed that it was the ‘evils of its practice’ that were giving Islam an anti-woman image in the eyes of the world. It was this ‘evil’ which had to be killed at its root. Every one agreed that Islam was the first religion that enjoined gender equality. Surah after surah was quoted by the maulanas and the women, that spoke of women and men as equal partners. It was reiterated by all that Islam gave women property rights at a time when the girl child was killed at birth for fear of public censure. If the shariah had been properly understood and practised Islam would have been hailed by women’s groups all over the world as the ideal religion for gender rights. 

Then came the declaration.
The crux of the declaration is that there is urgent need to create awareness among Muslims on the issue. Small workshops are to be held in all parts of the country where, with the help of imams and ulema, people would be educated about their rights and duties; especially those pertaining to marriage. A concerted endeavour is to be made to eradicate the frequent and irresponsible exercise of the right to divorce which brings distress all around. Special restraint on divorce is enjoined, which would mean that people will be encouraged to seek ‘advice and intervention’ of ulema, imams and community panchayats to determine if there is a genuine need for talaaq. The practice of dowry has been declared un-Islamic by the ulema; this edict has to be strictly enforced. 

Public opinion has to be mobilised to eradicate evils like non-payment of mehr and contracting second marriages without doing justice to the first. Strictures were also placed on the ‘unhelpful’ role of a ‘number of women’ in matters of dowry demands. Finally, there was a plea to the government of India for the establishment of Darul Qaza (Islamic judicial panchayats) as well as shariah benches within the Family Court system.

With the exception of the demand for Darul Qaza, the points in the declaration attempt to cover the issues which have been most contentious for Muslim women since the Shah Bano agitation. So far as Darul Qaza is concerned, let it be understood that establishment of a parallel judiciary is not the answer. Problems of pendency plague the entire judicial system causing untold hardships, particularly to women. And who can guarantee the efficacy of Darul Qazas, the quality of the presiding judges, the efficiency of proceedings? Ulema themselves understand this conundrum; therefore it is surprising that time and again they continue to raise this issue. But so far as the other aspects of personal law that cause Muslim women untold suffering, the MPLB has tried to address them in this declaration. The maulanas have listened and reacted. The fact remains that they could have done much more. But they have chosen to tread the path with utmost care; perhaps because they wanted to keep all the factions together.

Let women’s groups try to understand the ulema’s difficulty and with practical wisdom keep chipping away until the citadel breaks down to let the winds of change blow through. It is a fact that the maulanas have the pulpit and millions of the ummah listen, weekly, to their Jumma Khutbas. When it comes to Muslim masses, it is mostly they who can bring in the desired change. Laws have never been able to change whole scale mindsets; else we would by now have eradicated child marriage and female foeticide. Maulanas are equally chagrined at the distorted image Islam is getting all over the world. In short, they need us as much as we need them. So, let us join together, let this conference go down in history as the turning point for Muslim women. 
 

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