Citizens for Justice and Peace has in a complaint to Times Now, raised concerns over the contents of the debate show titled “Madrasa Jihad’ पर बड़ा खुल़ास़ा, मजहबी त़ालीम क़ा ‘491 तंत्र‘”. This show aired on November 11 on Times Now Navbharat and was based on a survey carried out by the UP government on Madrassas in certain districts of the State. Reportedly, the survey found that   Bahraich city, which is close to the Nepal border, has 792 madrassas out of which 491 were found to be running “without license”.  Over this news, the channel held a debate and declared that something called “madrassa Jihad” was taking place in Bahraich.

The segment starts with a large display in the background which reads “Bahraich me Madrassa Jihad” (Madrassa Jihad in Bahraich). The following text is repeatedly displayed throughout the debate which suggests that the intention of the channel was to spread stigma, even hatred against the Muslim community.

• UP me Madarsa Jihad par bada khulasa (00:05)
• Jaha Owaisi gaye waha awaidh madarse ugg aaye? (00:53)
• Bahraich ka M Factor (04:32)
• Bharat-Nepal Sarhad … Kisne banaya ‘gadh’ (00:30)
• Bahraich me 34% Muslim aabadi (04:27)
• Akramankari Mahmood ghaznavi ka bhanja tha Masood (05:30)
• Bahraich me Salar Masood Ghazi ki dargah (28:50)

The host, Nanina Yadav questioned how these madrassas are being funded, the speaker, a Muslim scholar, said that Muslims all over the country themselves fund the madrassas to which she questioned “akhir aisa kya hota hai madarso me ki itna bada dil dikhate hai” (How is it that they display such ‘generosity’ only when it comes to Madrassas?”)

The complaint states that this persistent stigmatization and attack on the minority community to drive home the point that Muslims are always up to sinister activities by terming everything they into “jihad” is harmful to the social fabric of this country. It further states that using terms like “Madrassa jihad” is both denigrating and demeaning towards the Muslim community, besides perpetuating stereotypes that can create attitudes and actions therefore which can cause harm and mischief.

The complaint may be read here:

Related:

CJP MOVES NBDSA AGAINST NEWS INDIA 18’S SHOW “DESHNAHINJHUKNEDENGE AMAN CHOPRA केसाथ” FOR SPREADING COMMUNAL PROPAGANDA

CJP MOVES NBDSA AGAINST AAJ TAK’S ‘BLACK AND WHITE SHOW’ FOR SPREADING COMMUNAL PROPAGANDA

CJP MOVES NBDSA AGAINST TIMES NOW’S VIRTUAL MEDIA TRIAL OF TEESTA SETALVAD

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A young and gullible student of the B Tech (IT), who joined militant ranks, warned the Ulema:
“One day they have to show their faces to Allah who will punish them for failing in their duties to give a call for Jihad fi Sabilillah (armed struggle in the path of Allah)”.

What Fazili and his likes of the radicalized Kashmiri youths fail to do is reason with themselves: when the Ulema— of any sect (Maslak) or any school of jurisprudence (Mazhab)—have not issued any decree or fatwa for jihad in Kashmir, why these half-educated youths are hell-bent on calling for the self-declared ‘jihad-e-Kashmir’? Have they become self-imposed Ulema or muftis (Islamic jurists) by themselves to declare Jihad or Qital, something that, according to the established Islamic scholars, only state can declare? Don’t they look up to the authoritative Ulema and authentic Islamic scholars as their religious mentors anymore? When Ulema and Islamic clergy don’t ask them to participate in any kind of jihad, then who are forcing them to go berserk and play havoc across the valley in the name of jihad and Khilafah? Clearly, the present-day extremist jihadists in Kashmir are deceiving themselves and are working on the behest of the foreign interests. They are simply puppets of the foreign political ambitions and are, knowingly or unconsciously, serving the ulterior motives and designs of the anti-India elements. Therefore, it is indispensable to rescue the misguided Muslim youths in Kashmir from the false Islamic jihad bred by the outside interests. Eisa Fazili argued with the Ulema that one day they have to show their faces to Allah who will punish them for ‘failing in their duties to call for Jihad’. But he could not reason with himself as to how he would show his own face to Allah while he has failed to spend his God-gifted precious life in the righteous path of Allah (fi sabeel lilah). Will Allah not ask him why he wasted his sacred life in the so-called jihad which was neither commanded by God nor declared by state, nor endorsed by even a single authentic Islamic scholar? 

Let alone the established Islamic scholars in India, even the Pakistani ulema have refuted the legitimacy of any such self-declared jihad. This came in a recent Anti-terror Fatwa popularly known as “Paigham-e-Pakistan” signed by 1,800 Ulama of almost every Islamic school of thought. It has categorically stated two important things: (1) that ‘only the state can announce a jihad’ and (2) that any decree (fatwa) or move to enforce the Sharia’h law cannot be legitimized without the legal statutes. It reads:

“According to Islamic jurists, no activity leading to war can be initiated without the consent of the state ruler or his appointed commanders. A soldier cannot attack the enemy in his personal capacity without the permission of his commander….Islamic jurists also pronounce that war cannot be waged without the permission of the government. Moreover, it cannot be started just to overcome the enemy. It is right of the government to allow fighting or waging war which is further subject to the vulnerable security situation of the state. The Holy Qur’an states: “And if they (the enemy, combatant or hostile people) incline towards peace and reconciliation, you also incline to it and put your trust in Allah. Surely, He alone is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.”(Surah Anfal: 8:61, Holy Qur’an) 

Based on several verses of the Qur’an like the above, authoritative ulema and muftis (Islamic jurists)—both in India and Pakistan—have delegitimized any kind of self-declared jihad or armed struggle. They have specifically decreed against waging war against the state. Thus, what the militants in Kashmir are doing is Fasad (mischief), not Jihad. Their untenable theological justifications and farfetched religious arguments cannot be the Islamic basis of support for their acts of terror and violence.

According to the reports, the slain Kashmiri militant also made a plea for the armed struggle or jihad against what he called the reign of Kufr (Dar al-Kufr). In his war-cry, his argument was that it is the religious duty of every Muslim to fight against the Darul Kufr and Kafirs. Thus, he sought to legitimize the terror attacks not just against the Indian government but also against those in power within Kashmir.

However, the extremists’ theological justification for combat against the non-Muslim majority countries calling them ‘Darul Kufr’ (land of disbelief) is completely erroneous and untenable. They are twisting the early Islamic terms and concepts which the ulema have mentioned in a historical background. But the present-day fanatics misperceive them and consider every country where the Islamic Shariah is not enforced as Darul Kufr or Darul Harb (land of war). Thus, jihadist extremists believe that the people of these countries may be fought by an Islamic expedition (Ghazwa) in order to conquer their territories.

But this jihadist argument has been refuted by the fact that the classification of territories made by early Islamic jurists was not intended to justify a wanton war against the non-Muslim lands. Rather, it served as a basis upon which certain jurisprudential (fiqhi) rulings were implemented on Muslims. It was just like the classification of the globe into political territories today.

The collective consensus (Ijma’a) of the mainstream Ulema today is on the authentic Islamic position that if Muslims peacefully coexist with other people enjoying safety of life and security of the religious freedom anywhere in the world, any such territory or country can be termed as Darul Mua’ahda (abode of peace treaty) or Darul Sulah (abode of reconciliation) in the purely Islamic jurisprudential (Fiqhi) terms. Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani, an established Islamic cleric who popularized the concept of Darul Mua’ahda in India, motivated Muslims towards the territorial nationalism rather than creating a nation based on religious considerations. In 1937, Maulana addressed a political meeting in Delhi and made this clear: “Today a nation is made on the basis of the country. If there are different religions in the country, the nation does not become different”. 

As for the medieval Islamic terms like Dar ul-Islam, Dar ul-Kufr and Dar ul-Harb, they are null and void today; abrogated by the new world order, constitution, international covenants, peace treaties and international relations. They might have been relevant during the third and fourth Islamic centuries. Even then, they did not serve as the basis for wanton killing of the non-Muslims or Muslims. Imam al-Kasani (r.a)—the 6th century renowned Islamic jurist who authored one of the most colossal reference works on the Hanafi law “al-Bada’e al-Sana’e”, wrote in his classical work:

“What is meant by designating the word “Dar” (abode) with Islam and Kufr (disbelief) is not Islam and disbelief per se, but the state of security or insecurity. Moreover, the relative juristic rulings are not based on Islam itself or Kufr (in this case), but on the security or insecurity.”

This position was reinforced by Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah revered as an important Imam in the Sunni Islamic tradition. He clearly stated in support of the above traditional Islamic position: “This is the opinion held by the majority of scholars [Ulema]. It is crystal clear that Muslims jurists made their opinions according to Fiqh al-Ma’alat (the Islamic law which takes into consideration the outcomes of actions).” [Ibn Qayyem Al-Jawziyyah, Ahkam Ahl Al-Dhimmah 2/873].

As an eminent medieval Islamic jurist of the Hanbali School of jurisprudence, the decrees on the religious rights of non-Muslims in the writings of Imam Ibn al-Qayyim compiled in “Ahkam Ahl al-Dhimmah” are noteworthy. They indicate that the early Islamic jurists applied Maslahah (public interest) as the basis of the Shariah rulings on the contemporary issues. As a result, the religious rights of non-Muslims were guaranteed in the authoritative views based on the rightly guided Islamic principles, rather than the misguiding opinions of the political theologians who served the ulterior motives and imperialist designs of the different Muslim dynasties.

Since the security and peace treaty are fully guaranteed in the constitution of the nation states, the rulings of Darul Islam or Darul Kufr are no longer of any Islamic application today. Zakir Musa’s open threat to behead ‘those who talk in terms of nation state’ is only a symptomatic of his sheer lack of knowledge about the Qur’anic law and canonical Islamic texts. Of course, his war cry of ‘Ghazwatul Hind’ threatens the status quo of the security paradigm in the valley, but he has no substantial support from the established Islamic scholarship in India.  

In fact, the entire extremist jihadist rhetoric in Kashmir which is underfoot to agitate Muslims on social media and YouTube videos is run of the mill and has no substance or support from any of the four established Islamic thought resources—Qur’an, Hadith, Ijm’a (consensus) or Qiyas (analogy). Those who are critical of the Indian Alims and Fazils accusing them of ‘siding with the government’ and refusing to issue the ‘jihad decree on Kashmir’ should worry as to how they would show their faces to Allah in the hereafter (Akhirah). In fact, Allah will punish them for failing in their duties to pay heed to this clear commandment of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him):

“Whosoever kills a person who has a truce with the Muslims will never smell the fragrance of Paradise”. (Reported by Sahih Muslim)

The non-Muslims, not only Muslims, enjoyed the protective status, safety of life and security of faith in the Madina state where the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) announced:

“Beware! Whoever is cruel and hard on a non-Muslim minority, or curtails their rights, or burdens them with more than they can bear, or takes anything from them against their free will; I (Muhammad) will complain against the person on the Day of Judgment”. (Reported by Abu Dawud)
—-

Regular Columnist with Newageislam.com, Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi is a classical Islamic scholar and English-Arabic-Urdu writer. He has graduated from a leading Islamic seminary of India, acquired Diploma in Qur’anic sciences and Certificate in Uloom ul Hadith from Al-Azhar Institute of Islamic Studies. Presently, he is pursuing his PhD in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Courtesy: New Age Islam
 

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Islamic State information on a hand-held device (via LobeLog)

Cyberspace is the ideal platform for terrorists because, unlike conventional warfare, barriers to entry into cyberspace are much lower. The price of entry is an Internet connection. The surreptitious use of the Internet to advance terrorist group objectives has created a new brand of Holy War—“virtual jihad”—that gains thousands of new adherents each day. Long after the current terrorist groups have ceased to be a major threat from a physical perspective, they will remain omnipresent in cyberspace, promoting a virtual caliphate from their safe haven behind computer keyboards around the world. Islamic extremists are natural candidates to transition to a virtual world that offers them automatic citizenship beyond the nation-state.

Since the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) was founded, its leaders have deftly and continually rewritten the narrative to claim that the group’s desired caliphate exists, has a specific location, and maintains a defined group of adherents. Unconstrained by the absence of a definitive Quranic guideline for what constitutes a caliphate, IS created its own self-promoting doctrine. The group expanded its caliphate narrative to include a wide range of options for participation: membership included everyone from the passive observer reading a blog or curiously following a Twitter feed to the keyboard jihadist editing Rumiyah or hacking a website to the real-world operators attacking a nightclub or running down holiday celebrants with a delivery truck.

IS has successfully exploited the sociopolitical environment and young adults’ obsession with technology to establish a growing community of devotees in the ungoverned territory of cyberspace, ensuring its ability to continue to coordinate and inspire violence well into the future. IS has found its own salvation via the Internet, particularly since it has already passed the peak of its real-world power.

IS has also capitalized on the world’s evolving propensity to integrate online activities with real-world activities. Social media has had an incredible multiplying effect on radical messaging, and IS has had great success publishing online, which has resonated particularly well with disenfranchised Muslims and youths, inspiring some to act on inspiration and guidance received online. IS has exploited their search for meaningful identity by promising to restore their dignity so that they may find personal fulfillment and purpose.

The virtual world is in some ways more compelling than the real world, because storylines can be artfully crafted for maximum appeal, while omitting anything that may be perceived as negative. A promise is much easier to make online, as is the vision of fulfilling aspirations. The IS has created virtual messaging that is wildly at odds with the reality of life as an IS fighter on the ground. Cyberspace has enabled IS to turn tactical defeats on the battlefield into glorious martyrdom operations that highlight the bravery and commitment of its fighters. The loss of territory and the deaths of key leaders have served to feed propaganda efforts that are used to prove the resiliency of the caliphate.

Since all that is required to be a virtual planner is an Internet connection and good encryption, they can operate from anywhere, although being geographically dispersed carries heightened risk of detection in some nations. The virtual planner model has revolutionized jihadist external operations. IS has taken advantage of recent advances in online communications and encryption so that the group’s top operatives can directly guide lone attackers, playing a central role in the conceptualization, target selection, timing, and execution of future attacks. Virtual planners offer operatives the same services once provided by strictly physical networks. They seamlessly execute the group’s guiding strategy and maximize the impact and propaganda value of attacks waged in its name, while avoiding many of the risks typically associated with physically training operatives, such as being tailed or getting caught returning to a home country.

Integrated into the group’s geographical command structure, virtual planners function much like theater commanders but in the cyber realm. IS virtual planners are also assigned areas of responsibility according to their nationality and linguistic skills, and are tasked with actively recruiting and handling attackers from these areas.

The advancement of Internet-based communication and the explosion of social media have enabled the planner to reach a larger audience than ever before. By building an “intimate” relationship with a potential attacker, the virtual planner provides encouragement and validation, addressing the individual’s doubts and hesitations while generating confidence and a strong desire to carry out an attack. Virtual planners can replicate the same social pressures that exist with in-person cells. Individuals can simply wander into searchable online networks rather than identify with and be socialized by covert in-person networks. Unlike with physical networks, the virtual planner model does not risk the capture or punishment of the network’s key operatives.

Individuals inspired by IS can directly reach out to virtual planners for guidance and assistance in carrying out attacks. In addition to recruitment and operational guidance, virtual planners can bring disparate individuals and cells together to form larger attack networks. IS virtual planners allow the group to effectively seize ownership over what would previously have been considered lone-wolf attacks. Virtual planners transform these individuals into ambassadors for the IS global brand at relatively low cost. Virtual planners help maximize the psychological and reputational impact of violence committed in the IS name, further enticing other potential devotees to join its cause.

The success of the virtual-planner model underscores the ongoing process of organizational learning by jihadist groups. But the model also has disadvantages, such as the inability to provide in-person training or be optimally nimble during an attack to modify plans as circumstances change. Cells directed by virtual planners are also at greater risk of being detected by Signals Intelligence, despite advances in end-to-end encryption. Nonetheless, the virtual planner approach is a low-cost, high-reward strategy with enormous destructive potential, especially as IS and other terrorist groups continue to refine the model.

Adaptations to jihadists’ modes of operation have continually outpaced states’ ability to effectively counter them, and will likely continue to do so. Virtual jihad has not only gained prominence and credibility as an alternative to traditional conceptions of jihad but has also progressively outpaced physical jihad. Although physical jihad continues to appeal to a great many actors, virtual jihad has supplanted traditional notions of jihad for a new generation of adherents who are either unwilling or unable to engage in physical violence themselves. The rise of the virtual jihadist has assumed an important (perhaps irreplaceable) role in rejuvenating the concept of jihad and facilitating the dissemination of its “counterculture” narrative to new audiences for many years to come.
 

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Chapters on jihad contributed to ‘slow radicalization’ of students, says state body trying to prevent militancy

The post Bangladesh govt bans ‘jihad’ from madrasa texts appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image: Pinterest

The post Open Letter: To Islamist Extremists, from the Other Muslims of the World appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Brussels remains on high alert as raids continue.       Image: Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA

To understand the terrorist attacks we must examine the wider circumstances. These include the hypothesis that many of the terrorists – including the Algerian Muhammad Belkaid killed in a Brussels raid earlier in March – have been involved in the conflict in Syria and Iraq, and as a result have become radicalised. But as the investigation continues, questions will be asked about where the radicalisation of those involved took place: in Syria or Iraq, or in the back streets of the Molenbeek quarter of Brussels.

It is important, however, to note that while the terrorists appear to be Muslims, this does not equate to a relationship between the attacks and Islam. It is like equating the 1980s IRA attacks on the UK mainland to Christianity (despite the sectarian nature of that conflict, it was a political struggle). Let’s not forget that the residents of Molenbeek publicly mourned the Paris attacks.

The Syria connection

The conflict in Syria and Iraq has undoubtedly contributed to the spread of Islamist terrorism both in the Middle East and wider world. The foreign participants in this conflict have gained experienced in a violent landscape where the ostensibly noble idea of a classical style of defensive jihad in support of the Syrian people against Bashar Al-Assad, has morphed into nihilistic Islamist terrorism.

This in turn has radicalised many individuals, who on their return home, have difficulty readjusting. They return with some additional “street credibility” and may subsequently become both potential terrorists or trainers and ideologues. One man wanted by police in connection with the Brussels attack, Najim Laachraoui, is believed to have travelled to Syria in 2013.

A key point here to understand is that many individuals, both Arabs and Westerners, who go to Syria to join Islamic State are not necessarily radicalised already (in the sense of holding extreme political or religious beliefs), but that fighting and socialisation among Islamist fighters in Syria can radicalise them.

Complex routes to radicalisation

A recently published trove of Islamic State documents gave an insight into the many individuals who go to Syria and don’t join Islamic State immediately, but join other (perhaps more moderate) groups initially. To support the point that many of those travelling to Syria are not necessarily radical, a recent report was published of US citizens who went to Syria to fight against (not alongside) Islamic State. Reading their narratives confirms that they too were not considered radical.

The notion of radicalisation is complex and contested. The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College London argues that radicalisation is a combination of grievances, ideology, and socialisation. Given that, and with the backdrop to the Syrian conflict, these factors appear to change over time.

Those who may have had initial grievances against the Assad regime in Syria, may later embrace a more extreme ideology, perhaps due to their socialisation with more extreme fighters in Syria. This transformation from fighting a classical jihad (against Syrian combatants) to one of terrorism (against civilians and non-combatants) is a much understudied phenomenon.

In this context, classical jihad is a fight to defend fellow Muslims against those who are persecuting them. The same logic was applied during the 1980s Afghan jihad, against the Soviets who were persecuting fellow Muslims in Afghanistan. This classical jihad had the full support of the United States as noted in a recent book about the war.

Syrian troops in al-Jbail Mountain, eastern Syria in March. SANA/EPA

The attacks in Brussels were largely, but regrettably, to be expected. One report noted that “one in nine foreign fighters returned to perpetrate attacks in the West”. With this in mind, and aware that at least 553 Belgians (many from the group Sharia4Belgium) have been active in Syria or Iraq, such attacks should not come as a surprise.

Islamic State, through its news agency Amaq, admitted responsibility for the Brussels attacks, perpetrated by “soldiers of the caliphate”. So the attacks in Brussels must be seen in the light of the geo-political events playing out in Syria and Iraq. They are not born out of a sectarian issue of Muslim versus Christian; but stem from groups and individuals who have been radicalised, beyond the point of involvement in defending their fellow Muslims through classical jihad, to one of Islamist terrorism.

This article was first published on The Conversation.

(Author is PhD candidate, Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St Andrews)

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The issues arising from the decision of India’s Sufi Muslims to provide a platform to the ‘Hindu Nationalist’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the World Sufi Forum in Delhi in mid-March has earlier been addressed by SabrangIndia. But that apart there is another dimension to the Sufi angst which has to do with the petro-dollar funded, aggressive promotion in India, as elsewhere in the world, of a version of Islam which is extremely rigid, highly intolerant and hostile not only to other religions but even other sects within Islam. The All India Ulema Mashaikh Board is the response of Sufi-minded Sunni Muslims at this ongoing attempt to monopolise Muslim space in India.        
 
Exporting fundamentalist Islam (Wahhabism) to Muslims across the world emerged, particularly from the 1970s onwards, has been a major preoccupation of the Saudi regime in order to gain legitimacy for the Saudi Arabian monarchy. In India this has meant the growing clout of puritanical and rigid sects like the Ahl-e Hadith and the Deobandis. This is bad news for all those concerned with bridging the growing Hindu-Muslim divide.

Reproduced below are excerpts from a paper by written by Yoginder Sikand in 2005. If anything, its contents are even more relevant today.

Its claim of representing Islamic ‘orthodoxy’ is the Saudi regime’s principal tool in seeking ideological legitimacy. Saudi Arabia prides itself on being, as it calls itself, the only ‘truly’ Islamic State in the world, although this claim is stiffly disputed by many Muslims. Official Saudi Islam, or what is commonly referred to as ‘Wahhabism’ by its opponents, is the outcome of the movement led by the 18th century puritan Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab (1703-91), who, along with Muhammad ibn Saud, was the chief architect of the Saudi State.

Exporting Wahhabi Islam to Muslims elsewhere in the world emerged, particularly from the 1970s onwards, as a major preoccupation of the Saudi regime. This was seen as a vital resource in order to gain legitimacy for the Saudi Arabian monarchy. Transnational linkages are thus crucial in the project of contemporary global Wahhabism. Since Wahhabism is seen by its proponents as the single, ‘authentic’ and ‘normative’ form of Islam, it has an inherent tendency of expansionism, seeking to impose itself on or replace other ways of understanding and practising Islam.

As home to a Muslim population of over 150 million, India has been an important target of Saudi Wahhabi propaganda. Private as well as semi-official Saudi Arabian assistance has made its way to numerous Indian Muslim individuals and organisations.

Photo Courtesy: Clarion Project

The sort of Islam that the Saudis began aggressively promoting abroad, including in India, in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, had a number of characteristic features. It was extremely literalist; it was rigidly and narrowly defined, being concerned particularly with issues of ‘correct’ ritual and belief, rather than with wider social and political issues; it was viciously sectarian, branding dissenting groups, such as Shias and followers of the Sufis as ‘enemies’ of Islam; and, finally, it was explicitly and fiercely critical of ideologies and groups, Muslim as well as other, that were regarded as political threats to the Saudi regime. Accordingly, these were routinely castigated as ploys of the ‘enemies of Islam’.

Intra-Sunni rivalry and the emergence of the Ahl-e Hadith

The establishment of British rule in India had momentous consequences for notions of Muslim and Islamic identity. The widely shared perception of Islam being under threat helped promote a feeling of Muslim unity transcending sectarian and ethnic boundaries. Yet, at the same time, British rule opened up new spaces for intra-Muslim rivalry. It was in this period that serious differences emerged within the broader Sunni Muslim fold, leading to the development of neatly-defined and on numerous issues mutually opposed sect-like groups, the principal being the Deobandis, the Barelvis and the Ahl-e Hadith. Each of these groups claimed a monopoly of representing the ‘authentic’ Sunni tradition, or the Ahl al-Sunnah wal Jamaah, branding rival claimants as aberrant and, in some cases, even as apostates. This brought to the fore the deeply fractured and fiercely contested nature of Sunni ‘orthodoxy’.

The pioneers of the Ahl-e Hadith saw themselves as struggling to promote what they believed to be the ‘true’ Islam of Muhammad and his companions. Like most other Sunni ulema, they considered the Shias to be outside the pale of Islam and therefore, kafirs. In addition, they believed that the other Sunni groups too had strayed from the path of the ‘pious predecessors’ (salaf).

Overall, they saw their mission as rescuing Muslims from what they saw as the sin of shirk and guiding them to the ‘pure monotheism’ (khalis tauhid) of the Prophet and his companions. Most of them were inspired by the example of Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab and his companions, particularly appreciating the Wahhabis’ criticism of popular custom. Yet, they did not identify themselves as such, refusing the label of Wahhabi that their detractors used to dismiss them.

Many Hanafi ulema saw the Ahl-e Hadith as a hidden front of the Wahhabis, whom they regarded as ‘enemies’ of Islam for their fierce opposition to the adoration of the Prophet and the saints, their opposition to popular custom and to taqlid, rigid conformity to one or the other of the four generally accepted schools of Sunni jurisprudence.

Further, they also saw the Ahl-e Hadith as directly challenging their own claims of representing normative Islam. Numerous Hanafi ulema issued fatwas branding the Ahl-e Hadith as virtual heretics, contemptuously referring to them as ghair muqallids for their opposition to taqlid, which they believed to be integral to established Sunni tradition. Hanafi opposition to the Ahl-e Hadith was fierce. In many places Hanafis refused them admittance to their mosques, schools and graveyards. Marital ties with them were forbidden, and in some places followers of the Ahl-e Hadith even faced physical assault.

In recent years Ahl-e Hadith scholars have penned scores of books and tracts sternly denouncing customs that many Indian Muslims share with their Hindu neighbours, a legacy of their pre-Islamic past. These also include customs, such as those associated with popular Sufism and the cults of the saints, which enabled Islam to take root in India and to adjust to the Indian cultural context. As Ahl-e Hadith writers see it, these are all ‘wrongful innovations’, having no sanction in the Prophet’s sunnah, and hence must be rooted out.

The Saudi-Ahl-e Hadith connection: Wahhabism as an external policy tool

The 1970s witnessed a growing involvement of certain Arab states, institutions and private donors in sponsoring a number of Islamic organisations and institutions in India. This was a direct outcome of the boom in oil revenues, particularly following the hike in oil prices by OPEC members in the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Although the precise magnitude of Arab assistance to Indian Muslim organisations cannot be ascertained, it was certainly significant, although the Indian press routinely exaggerated it, leading to a scare of petrodollars flooding the country as part of an alleged grand conspiracy to convert poor, particularly ‘low’ caste, Hindus to Islam.

In actual fact, few Muslim organisations actually engaged in missionary work among Hindus received such money. Instead, most Arab, including Saudi, financial assistance went to Muslim organisations to establish mosques, madrassas and publishing houses. To a lesser extent, money was channelled to Muslim organisations to set up schools and hospitals in Muslim localities and to provide scholarships to needy Muslim students.

Saudi funds for Muslim institutions in India have come through a range of sources, including the Saudi State, various Saudi-sponsored Islamic organisations such as the Mecca-based Rabita al-Alami al-Islami (World Muslim League) and the Dar ul-Ifta wal Dawat ul-Irshad, as well as private donors, mostly rich sheikhs, some with close links to the Saudi ruling family. Several Indian Muslims working in Saudi Arabia in various capacities also send back money to fund Islamic institutions, based mainly in towns and villages where their families live.

Monetary assistance to selected Islamic institutions is only one method through which the Saudis have sought to patronise and influence key Muslim leaders and opinion makers in India. Other forms of assistance include sponsored Haj pilgrimages for Muslim leaders, including ulema, patronising of selected publishing houses, scholarships for madrassa students to study in Saudi Islamic universities and jobs for such graduates in both the private as well as public sector within Saudi Arabia.

The largest beneficiary of this largesse is believed to be the Ahl-e Hadith, although the Jamaat-i Islami and the Deobandis are also said to have benefited to some extent. The Barelvis and the Shias, both of whom regard Wahhabism as wholly heretical, have received little or no financial support at all from Saudi sources. This itself suggests that Saudi finance to Muslim institutions in India is intended to serve and promote a particular ideological vision of Islam, one that ties in with the interests of the Saudi regime and its official Wahhabi ulema.

Saudi Arabia emerged as a significant sponsor of Islamic institutions internationally, including in India, only in the 1970s. This was a period of intense ideological struggle in the Arab world. Arab socialism and pan-Arab nationalism under Nasser in Egypt and the Baathists in Syria and Iraq and various communist parties active in numerous Arab states all called for the overthrow of monarchical regimes in the region, which they saw as lackeys of the United States and as helping the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Within Saudi Arabia itself voices of dissent and protest emerged, including from those who had been influenced by socialist trends elsewhere in the region.

The literature produced by several Ahl-e Hadith publishing houses in India helps promote a version and vision of Islam that is almost identical to that of the Wahabbis of Saudi Arabia, and hence one that fits in with the interests of both the Saudi Wahhabi ulema as well as the Saudi State. The claim of the Saudi monarchy as representing the sole ‘authentic’ Islamic regime in the world is repeatedly stressed in several Ahl-e Hadith writings, and reflects the close links, ideological as well as financial, between several Indian Ahl-e Hadith leaders and the Saudi State and its official Wahhabi ulema.

Then came the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, which led to fears of an export of revolutionary, anti-monarchical Islam to the Arab world, including to Saudi Arabia. Ayatollah Khomeini vehemently denounced the Saudi kingdom, insisting that Islam had no place for monarchical rule. He also bitterly attacked the Saudis for being American stooges and for willingly acquiescing in American support for Israel.

In his will, made public in 1989, he denounced the Saudi regime as ‘anti-Islamic’, claiming that it was in league with ‘Satanic powers’. He argued that Wahhabism represented ‘anti-Koranic ideas’ and a ‘baseless, superstitious cult’, and was aimed at destroying Islam from within. Radical appeals emanating from Tehran, including anti-Wahhabi and anti-Saudi sentiments soon captured the imagination of Muslims all over the world.

The Iranian Revolution played the role of a major catalyst in moulding Saudi foreign policy, in which the export of its official Wahhabi form of Islam emerged as a key instrument. The anti-monarchical thrust of the revolution was seen by the Saudi regime as a menacing threat. If the Shah of Iran, America’s closest and strongest ally in the region, could be overthrown as a result of the passionate appeals of a charismatic Imam, the Saudi rulers, it was painfully realised, could well meet the same fate. Consequently, the Saudis, backed by the Americans, began investing heavily in promoting Wahhabi Islam abroad in order to counter the appeal of the Iranian Revolution, both within Saudi Arabia itself and abroad.

Stressing the regime’s ‘Islamic’ credentials now came to be relied upon as the principal tool to strengthen it and to stave off challenges from internal as well as external opponents, from Muslims opposed to the regime’s corrupt and dictatorial ways and its close alliance with the imperialist powers, principally the United States. Saudi export of Wahhabism was given a further boost with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when the Saudis, supported by the Americans, pumped in millions of dollars to fund Wahhabi-style schools and organisations in Pakistan in order to train guerrillas to fight the Russians. While such assistance, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, was presented as a sign of Saudi Arabia’s professed commitment to ‘true’ Islam, it also functioned as a thinly veiled guise for promoting the interests of the Saudi regime. In exporting this brand of Islam abroad, India, home to the second largest Muslim community in the world, received particular importance.

The sort of Islam that the Saudis began aggressively promoting abroad, including in India, in the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, had a number of characteristic features. It was extremely literalist; it was rigidly and narrowly defined, being concerned particularly with issues of ‘correct’ ritual and belief, rather than with wider social and political issues; it was viciously sectarian, branding dissenting groups, such as Shias and followers of the Sufis as ‘enemies’ of Islam; and, finally, it was explicitly and fiercely critical of ideologies and groups, Muslim as well as other, that were regarded as political threats to the Saudi regime. Accordingly, these were routinely castigated as ploys of the ‘enemies of Islam’.

Saudi patronage and the Indian Ahl-e Hadith

A hugely disproportionate amount of Saudi aid to Indian Muslim groups in the decades after the Iranian Revolution is said to have gone to institutions run by the Ahl-e Hadith. This is hardly surprising, given the shared ideological tradition and vision of the Ahl-e Hadith and the Saudi Wahabbis. One result of the generous Saudi patronage of the Indian Ahl-e Hadith has been that there has been a growing convergence between the latter and the Saudi Wahhabi ulema, so much so that today there is hardly any difference between the two groups.

Saudi finance to Indian Ahl-e Hadith institutions has heavily influenced the contents of the vast amount of literature that they produce and distribute. In the last two decades there has been a mushroom growth in the number of Ahl-e Hadith publishing houses in India. Several of them are said to receive Saudi funds, directly or otherwise. Many of them produce low-priced books, and, now, audio tapes, video cassettes and compact discs, and some even operate their own web sites. Most of the authors whose works they publish are Indian and, to a lesser extent, Pakistani Ahl-e Hadith ulema who have received higher education in various Saudi universities.

Several of them are currently working in various official as well as private Islamic organisations in Saudi Arabia itself. Their vision and understanding of Islam is indelibly shaped by their own experiences in Saudi Arabia. They see the Saudi Wahhabi version of Islam as normative and other forms of Islam as deviant.

Much of the literature produced by Indian Ahl-e Hadith publishing houses focusses on the minutiae of ritual practices and beliefs. This is a reflection, in part, of the overwhelmingly literalist understanding of Saudi Wahhabi Islam. Scores of books penned by Ahl-e Hadith ulema are devoted to intricate discussion of what they regard as the ‘correct’ methods of praying, performing ablutions and offering supplications, as well as rules and regulations related to food, dress, marriage, divorce and so on.

A principle purpose of these publications is to attack rival Muslim, including Sunni, groups, and to sternly condemn them as ‘aberrant’ on account of differences in their methods of performing rituals and their rules governing a range of issues related to normative personal and collective behaviour.

Another interesting feature of the literature produced by Ahl-e Hadith publishing houses in India, and one that is directly linked to the close association between the Ahl-e Hadith and the Saudi Wahabbis, is a fierce hostility to local beliefs and practices. This hostility, while having been a defining feature of the early Ahl-e Hadith, has been further exacerbated with the growing Saudi-Ahl-e Hadith nexus. In recent years Ahl-e Hadith scholars have penned scores of books and tracts sternly denouncing customs that many Indian Muslims share with their Hindu neighbours, a legacy of their pre-Islamic past.

These also include customs, such as those associated with popular Sufism and the cults of the saints, which enabled Islam to take root in India and to adjust to the Indian cultural context. As Ahl-e Hadith writers see it, these are all ‘wrongful innovations’, having no sanction in the Prophet’s sunnah, and hence must be rooted out. In their place they advocate an adoption of a range of Arab cultural norms and practices which are seen as genuinely ‘Islamic’.

The publication of Urdu translations of the compendia of fatwas of leading Saudi Wahhabi ulema by Indian Ahl-e Hadith publishing houses is a reflection of this cultural alternative that they seek to provide to take the place of what they see as ‘un-Islamic’ practices widely prevalent among many Indian Muslims. This has added to the conflict with other Muslim groups, most particularly with the Barelvis, who are associated with the cults of the Sufis. The ‘Saudi Arabisation’ of Islam and Indian Muslim culture that the Ahl-e Hadith seeks to promote also inevitably further widens the cultural chasm between Muslims and Hindus.

As many Ahl-e Hadith ulema see it, and this is reflected in their writings as well, Hinduism is hardly different from the pagan religion of the Arabs of the pre-Islamic Jahiliya period. Although most of them do not advocate conflict with Hindus, some Ahl-e Hadith scholars insist on the need for Muslims to have as little to do with the Hindus as possible, for fear of the ‘deleterious’ consequences this might have for the Muslims’ own commitment to and practice of Islam.

Like other Muslim groups, Indian Ahl-e Hadith publishing houses have also paid particular attention to combating their Muslim rivals. This cannot be understood without taking into account the Saudi connection. Scores of books have been penned by Indian Ahl-e Hadith ulema, branding Sufis, Shias and Deobandis as heretical.

Tirelessly claiming in their writings to being the sole representatives of ‘normative’ Islam and, in the process, identifying themselves with the Saudi Wahhabi ulema, enables the Indian Ahl-e Hadith ulema to present themselves as faithful allies of the Saudis, which in turn helps earn them recognition as well as monetary assistance from Saudi sponsors. In addition, such publications also serve the purpose of presenting the Saudi Wahhabi version of Islam as normative, and in putting forward the claim of the Saudi regime to being the only one in the world sincerely and seriously committed to ‘genuine’ Islam.

The Iranian Revolution played the role of a major catalyst in moulding Saudi foreign policy, in which the export of its official Wahhabi form of Islam emerged as a key instrument. The anti-monarchical thrust of the revolution was seen by the Saudi regime as a menacing threat.

Access to Saudi funds has therefore led to heightened conflict between various Muslim sectarian groups in India, as Ahl-e Hadith publishing houses produce and distribute literature on a large scale bitterly attacking their rivals of being Muslim only in name.

Heightened intra-Muslim polemics within India are not unrelated to the interests of the Saudi regime. Thus, the virulently anti-Shia and anti-Sufi propaganda material churned out by various Ahl-e Hadith publishing houses in India, some of this said to be sponsored by Saudi patrons, serves the purpose of denouncing as outside the pale of Islam Muslim groups who are opposed to Wahhabism and the Saudi State, these often being branded as ‘enemies’ of Islam. In this way the literature produced by several Ahl-e Hadith publishing houses in India helps promote a version and vision of Islam that is almost identical to that of the Wahabbis of Saudi Arabia, and hence one that fits in with the interests of both the Saudi Wahhabi ulema as well as the Saudi State.

The claim of the Saudi monarchy as representing the sole ‘authentic’ Islamic regime in the world is repeatedly stressed in several Ahl-e Hadith writings, and reflects the close links, ideological as well as financial, between several Indian Ahl-e Hadith leaders and the Saudi State and its official Wahhabi ulema.

Numerous books penned by Indian Ahl-e Hadith scholars discuss in detail the ‘great’ contributions of the present rulers of Saudi Arabia to the ‘Islamic cause’, inevitably concluding with the claim that Saudi Arabia under its present masters represents the only ‘truly’ Islamic State in the world today. They also make it a point to call on God to bless the Saudi king and pray for his continued rule. The Saudi monarch is invariably presented as a pious, fully committed Muslim, whose sole concern is, so it is sought to be argued, the protection and promotion of ‘authentic’ Islam. Support for this ‘authentic’ Islam and for the Saudi rulers are presented as indivisible.

Interestingly, there is no reference at all in Ahl-e Hadith writings to the widespread dissatisfaction within Saudi Arabia itself with the ruling family. Nor is there any reference to the rampant corruption in the country, the lavish lifestyles of the princes, and to Saudi Arabia’s close links with the United States.

Nor, still, is there ever any mention of the claim, put forward by many Muslims, that monarchy is ‘un-Islamic’, particularly one like the despotic and corrupt Saudi regime. This is added evidence of the fact that Saudi-sponsored propaganda abroad is tailor-made to suit the interests of its ruling family.

Ahl-e Hadith-Deobandi polemics and the Saudi nexus

As a claimant to Sunni ‘orthodoxy’, the Ahl-e Hadith is not alone in denouncing the Shias as heretics and therefore outside the pale of Islam. In fact, many Deobandi and Barelvi ulema share the same opinion. Hence the virulent opposition to the Shias on the part of the Ahl-e Hadith is hardly surprising. Given its commitment to what it sees as ‘pure’ monotheism and its fierce opposition to ‘wrongful innovations’, its denunciation of the Barelvis, who are associated with the cults of the Sufis, is also understandable.

What seems particularly intriguing, however, is the fact that, of late, Ahl-e Hadith publishing houses in India have been devoting particular attention to denouncing the Deobandis who, while being muqallids as well as proponents of a reformed Sufism, share with the Ahl-e Hadith a commitment to strict compliance with the Shariah and the extirpation of what they describe as bidaah. In that sense, the Ahl-e Hadith are closer in doctrinal terms to the Deobandis than to any other Indian Sunni group. Despite this, it appears that in recent years Indian Ahl-e Hadith scholars have been focussing considerably more attention on combating the Deobandis than critiquing their Barelvi and Shia rivals. This seemingly puzzling development begs an explanation.

One possible reason for this is that the Deobandis in India are far more organised and influential than the Barelvis. The Deobandis manage a number of influential organisations, madrassas and publishing houses all over India. Consequently, they have probably been more effective in critiquing the Ahl-e Hadith than their other rivals, which in turn has forced the Ahl-e Hadith to pay particular attention to the challenge they face from the Deobandi front. In addition to this factor are other developments, related to struggles over money, influence and authority, which have made for a sharp intensification of rivalries between the Ahl-e Hadith and the Deobandis in recent years. The Saudi connection seems to have played a major role in abetting these conflicts.

The Deobandis, by and large, seem to have maintained the somewhat ambiguous attitude of their elders towards the Ahl-e Hadith and the Wahabbis till at least the late 1970s, when the situation began to change with new access to Saudi funding. In the course of the Afghan war against the Soviets, the Saudis recognised that the Deobandis were far more influential and had a far larger presence than the Ahl-e Hadith in both Pakistan as well as Afghanistan. Consequently, much Saudi funding began making its way to Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan in order to train guerrilla fighters armed with a passion for jehad against the Russians. A shared commitment to a Shariah-centric Islam made such assistance acceptable to both parties.

Islam is conveniently marshalled and often interpreted in diametrically opposing ways by the Saudi regime to suit its own strategic and ideological purposes abroad. Saudi Arabia is said to have been the largest financier of radical Islamist groups abroad, some of whom, as in the Philippines, Chechnya, Bosnia and Kashmir, have taken to armed struggle and terrorism against non-Muslim States. Saudi-funded literature routinely extols such groups as mujahids engaged in a legitimate Islamic jehad.

Impact of recent developments on Saudi links with Indian Muslim groups

The 1990s were characterised by fierce polemical battles between the Ahl-e Hadith and the Deobandis in India, with each group charging the other of being ‘anti-Islamic’ and as hidden fronts of the ‘enemies’ of Islam. Although the two groups continue to regard each other as fierce rivals, the sharp polemical exchanges between them now seem to have dampened somewhat. One factor for this is probably the strong need that many Muslims feel to present a united front to combat the challenge of aggressive Hindu groups in the country.

Another important factor for the apparent decline in overt strife between the Ahl-e Hadith and the Deobandis in recent years is what seems to be a significant shift in Saudi strategy. Following the events of September 2001, Saudi Arabia came under tremendous pressure from the United States to clamp down on Wahhabi militants at home and abroad. The Saudi strategy of sponsoring radical Wahhabism seemed to have boomeranged, as a new generation of Islamist radicals emerged within Saudi Arabia itself, critiquing the Saudi regime for its corruption and for its close links with the United States. Consequently, the Saudi Arabians were forced to take action against their own internal radical Islamist opponents, realising the major challenge that they posed to the Saudi monarchy.

Simultaneously, and because of these developments, Saudi aid to Wahhabi groups abroad, including India, is said to have declined somewhat. This will naturally have a major impact on relations between different Muslim groups in India, and will most notably impact on the expansion of the Ahl-e Hadith, who have been the major recipient of Saudi assistance in recent years.

Another possible indication of the shift in Saudi strategy is the fact that of late certain Ahl-e Hadith publishing houses in India have brought out books praising the Saudi State and critiquing what they describe as the ‘terrorists’ who wish to weaken it. These books argue that the ‘correct’ method of the political ‘reform’ that Islamist opponents of the regime seek is not through violence but rather through ‘guiding’ the political authorities to follow the path of God by providing them with ‘Islamic’ advice.

This shows how Islam is conveniently marshalled and often interpreted in diametrically opposing ways by the Saudi regime to suit its own strategic and ideological purposes abroad. Saudi Arabia is said to have been the largest financier of radical Islamist groups abroad, some of whom, as in the Philippines, Chechnya, Bosnia and Kashmir, have taken to armed struggle and terrorism against non-Muslim States. Saudi-funded literature routinely extols such groups as mujahids engaged in a legitimate Islamic jehad. Yet, faced now with its own internal and increasingly vocal Islamist opposition, it considers similar movements within Saudi Arabia as major sources of ‘strife’ and as clearly ‘un-Islamic’. Whether, as a result of increasing international pressure, the Saudis will be willing to extend the same logic to Islamist groups abroad whom they have been patronising for many years is a moot point.

(This article is an excerpt from the writer’s monograph, "Intra-Muslim Rivalries in India and the Saudi Connection" which can be accessed from his web site www.islaminterfaith.org. Archived from Communalism Combat, March 2005, Year 11, No. 106).  
 

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Looking for some reference material on the subject, I did a Google search this morning on ‘Islam and women’. To my shock and horror the ‘lead’ news headline that leapt out of page 1 was this: “Allah allows Muslims to rape non-Muslim women in order to humiliate them, claims Islamic professor”. Source of the News? Zee News.

A quick follow-up search with the words “Allah allows Muslims to rape non-Muslim women” showed that the same news item has been flashed on several other websites in the last 24 hours. Among them is www.jihadwatch.org which is notorious for peddling Islamophobia 24/7.

Clicking on the video-clip attached to the news reports would leave you genuinely perplexed. For the original video clip of Suad Saleh, a female professor of theology at Cairo’s Al Azhar University, was telecast by the Arabic Al-Hayat TV (Egypt) on September 12, 2014. The video clip now posted has sub-titles in English provided by the USA-based MEMRI – Middle East Media Research Institute.

However problematic Suad’s propositions, how does a 16 months old video clip suddenly become today’s ‘Breaking News’? The only motive that comes to mind is this: fuel Islamophobia 24/7; night and day, any which way.

For viewers/readers content with skimming news headlines what message could this particular headline possibly convey except that Islam encourages all Muslim men to rape non-Muslim women to humiliate them, whenever and wherever possible? Some may be prompted to think: Ohhh! So it’s not only the ISIS; Islam itself sanctions rape of non-Muslim women by Muslim men.

Many Muslim countries and organisations across the globe have repeatedly denounced the ISIS for the sexual enslavement of Yazidi women and others. Yet the message being put out is that Islam, not ISIS, is the problem.  

Only if you read the news reports in full would you realise that however problematic, the professor is claiming that in addition to sex with their wives, the Quran (Allah) permits Muslim men to also have sex with those non-Muslim women who come to their individual share as “war booty” in the course of a defensive war.

For viewers/readers content with skimming news headlines what message could this particular headline possibly convey except that Islam encourages all Muslim men to rape non-Muslim women to humiliate them, whenever and wherever possible? Some may be prompted to think: Ohhh! So it’s not only the ISIS; Islam itself sanctions rape of non-Muslim women by Muslim men.

Here below is the text of the video clip, with English by MEMRI:

“Those whom you own” (slavery) existed before Islam. It existed among all nations and countries, not just among pre-Islam Arabs. Anyone could trade in freeborn men and women. This is called the selling of freeborn people. It’s like the selling of human organs and trafficking in freeborn humans today.

But when Islam emerged it put (slavery) into order, by limiting it to legitimate wars between Muslims and their enemies.

If we fought Israel, which is plundering land, and is an aggressor against people and their faith… Obviously it is impossible that we fight Israel, even though Surah Al-Isra in the Quran foretells this, and nothing is beyond the power of Allah…

The female prisoners of war are “those whom you own”. In order to humiliate them, they become the property of the army commander, or of a Muslim, and he can have sex with them just like he has sex with his wives.

Some opportunists and extremists, who only harm Islam, say: “I will bring a woman from East Asia, as (a slave girl) under the status of ‘those whom you own,’ and with the consent of my wife, I will allocate this woman a room in the house, and will have sex with her as a slave girl”.

This is nonsense. This is not prescribed in Islam at all. Islam says that a woman (with whom sex is permitted) is either a wife or a slave girl. Legitimately owned slaves come from among prisoners from a war, which is waged against the Muslims, a war to plunder land, a war against our faith, and so on.

What some people are doing now is an aggression against Allah, and against Allah’s legal texts in the Quran, and we must not be influenced by this at all.

What’s happening here? Apparently Professor Suad’s main concern is to castigate present day Muslims who seek justification in Islam for entrapping non-Muslim women from ‘East Asia’ and treating them as sex-slaves. Islam, she argues, is not to be blamed for bringing slavery into the world; when Islam was born, slavery was a practice prevalent across countries and cultures. It is in such a context, she claims to begin with, that apart from having sex with their wives, Islam also permitted Muslim men to have sex with women who they captured and enslaved in the course of a “defensive war”.

Many might question how Islam which claims to have been born to bring about human emancipation and a social revolution could have legitimised sex with women slaves captured during war, with the supposed purpose of humiliating them. Professor Suad only makes matters worse by implying that though it is “obviously impossible”, even today in a “defensive war” against Israeli aggression it would be legitimate in Islam for Muslim men to enslave captured Israeli women and have sex with them.

While professor Suad’s propositions are seriously problematic, no less problematic is the attempt to latch on to her remarks telecast 16 months ago into today’s breaking news.

Video Link: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f74_1452606016

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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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Illustration: Amili Setalvad
 
The magnitude of the terrorist attack on America has forced Muslims to take a critical look at themselves. Why have we repeatedly turned a blind eye to the evil within our societies? Why have we allowed the sacred terms of Islam, such as fatwa and jihad, to be hijacked by obscurantist, fanatic extremists?
 

Muslims are quick to note the double standards of America — its support for despotic regimes, its partiality towards Israel, and the covert operations that have undermined democratic movements in the Muslim world. But we seldom question our own double standards. For example, Muslims are proud that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the West. Evangelical Muslims, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, happily spread their constricted interpretations of Islam. But Christian missionaries in Muslim countries are another matter. They have to be banned or imprisoned. Those who burn effigies of President Bush will be first in the queue for an American visa.
 

The psychotic young men, members of such extremist organisations as Al-Muhajiroun and ‘Supporters of Sharia’, shouting fascist obscenities outside the Pakistan embassy, are enjoying the fruits of Western freedom of expression. Their declared aim is to establish ‘Islamic states’. But in any self–proclaimed Islamic state, they would be ruthlessly silenced.
 

This is not the first time concerned Muslims have raised such questions. But we have been forced to ignore them for two main reasons. In a world where it is always open season for prejudice and discrimination against Muslims and Islam, our main task has seemed to be to defend Islam.
 

The other reason concerns ummah, the global Muslim community. We have to highlight, the argument goes, the despair and suffering of the Muslim people — their poverty and plight as refugees and the horror of war–torn societies.
 

So, all good and concerned Muslims are implicated in the unchecked rise of fanaticism in Muslim societies. We have given free reign to fascism within our midst, and failed to denounce fanatics who distort the most sacred concepts of our faith. We have been silent as they proclaim themselves martyrs, mangling beyond recognition the most sacred meaning of what it is to be a Muslim.
 

But the events of September 11 have freed us from any further obligation to this misapplied conscience. The insistence by the Muslim Council of Britain that the Islamic cause is best served by the Taliban handing over Osama bin Laden, is indicative of this shift.
 

The devotion with which so many Muslims, young and old, in Europe and America, are organising meetings and conferences to discuss how to unleash the best intentions, the essential values of Islam, from the rhetoric of jihad, hatred and insularity, is another.
 

But we have to go further. Muslims are in the best position to take the lead in the common cause against terrorism. The terrorists are among us, the Muslim communities of the world. They are part of our body politic. And it is our duty to stand up against them.

The psychotic young men, members of such extremist organisations as Al-Muhajiroun and ‘Supporters of Sharia’, shouting fascist obscenities outside the Pakistan embassy, are enjoying the fruits of Western freedom of expression. Their declared aim is to establish ‘Islamic states’.

We must also reclaim a more balanced view of Islamic terms like fatwa. A fatwa is simply a legal opinion based on religious reasoning. It is the opinion of one individual and is binding on only the person who gives it. But, since the Rushdie affair, it has come to be associated in the West solely with a death sentence. Now that Islam has become beset with the fatwa culture, it becomes necessary for moderate voices to issue their own fatwas.
 

So, let me take the first step. To Muslims everywhere I issue this fatwa: any Muslim involved in the planning, financing, training, recruiting, support or harbouring of those who commit acts of indiscriminate violence against persons or the apparatus or infrastructure of states is guilty of terror and no part of the ummah. It is the duty of every Muslim to spare no effort in hunting down, apprehending and bringing such criminals to justice.
 

If you see something reprehensible, said the Prophet Muhammad, then change it with your hand; if you are not capable of that then use your tongue (speak out against it); and if you are not capable of that then detest it in your heart.
 

The silent Muslim majority must now become vocal. The rest of the world could help by adopting a more balanced tone. The rhetoric that paints America as a personification of innocence and goodness, a god–like power that can do no wrong, not only undermines the new shift but threatens to foreclose all our futures. 

Archived from Communalism Combat, October 2001 Year 8  No. 72, Cover Story 2

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