What It Means To Be a Liberal Muslim

“Liberal Muslims” the term sounds oxymoron, both to Muslims and non Muslims. For Muslims, Liberal or Liberated Muslim means a Muslim who has given up practicing Islam, its tenants and does not bother much about the lawful and forbidden in Islam. He continues to be legally a Muslim but his opinion about Islam and Muslims is not acceptable despite being valid. For Non Muslims, Liberal Muslim is one who does not demand reservation, drinks, dines with them, does not inhabit the Muslim ghettoes and never decries about the discrimination against Muslims in India. So a liberal Muslim is on his own with little support from his community and even in general from the society. The Muslim Ulema and community do not consider them Muslim enough to be trusted while Non Muslims accuse them of not being liberal enough. So liberal Muslims are always decried and labelled as stooges of West by their own community while for others, they remain ‘communal’ Muslims. These fault lines have never been negotiated or redrawn.

With the advent of colonialism the Muslim community responded to the socio-political and educational system of the colonizers through three broad reactions. First there were those who were for the wholesome adoption and imitation of the western colonial model.

Second class was completely hostile and opposed to the model.

The other third class was of those who accepted the model with exceptions and tried to incorporate changes in it to make it compatible with Islam.

So there was a division between Traditional and Liberal Muslims. The divide continued in the free India too. The madrasas are giving birth to a traditional, backward looking leadership while the secular education is shaping a different leadership. The division is complete and compartmentalized. Each section respects the invisible contract of not breeching into the territory of the other. Madrasa educated Ulema with sectarian outlook always express opinions about Islam even if sectarian and hold sway over the masses. Whenever they find their position and status is being threatened, they initiate a movement decrying “Islam in danger”. They threaten the liberal opinionated Muslim with Fatwas and community boycott. The political parties of all hues need these madrasas trained mullahs, Maulvis and Ulema for consolidating the Muslim vote bank as they can influence the opinion of voters. This group certainly needs to be appeased as their power cannot be undermined. Plus over the centuries they have adorned, developed and evolved a certain type of dress code including the beards coupled with the reinforcement of that image by media that even Muslims cannot accept anyone as Islamic scholar and community leader who does not possess these features. So liberal Muslims here again prove dwarfs as they don not possess these features. The community cannot recognize them as leaders.

A liberal Muslim is one who believes in the principle of Sulh-I-Kul (peace with all). He upholds the fact that his is not the only source of truth but there are various versions of truth that are available in different ideologies, religions and viewpoints. A liberal Muslim even if he does not observe the rituals of Islam, implements and practices its universal values like egalitarianism, social justice, charity, supporting the destitute and contributing to the movements aiming at the empowerment of downtrodden. A liberal Muslim is tolerant when it comes to the interpretation of Islam and forging unity both intra and inter-faith. Liberal Muslim is a crusader for the cause of women rights, empowerment through education and democracy. Liberal Muslims uphold the postulates of non violence. Unlike traditional Ulema he does not indulge in mudslinging, false allegations and issuing legal decrees.

Among the liberal Muslims we lack those few who can authoritatively write, speak and interpret Islam according to the dictum of current academic debates. The door of Ijtihad that has been closed by the traditional Ulema needs to be opened up. Only liberal Muslims can have the courage to undertake the same. They should prepare themselves for this job and it will take some time to develop the requisite expertise among the liberal Muslims who then can indulge in Ijtihad. The traditional Ulema have created a false aura around themselves that they are the epitome and zenith of piety, with huge following and when they do not dare to undertake Ijtihad how can liberal Muslims do it? But as the time and necessity demands, Ijtihad, hence despite their opposition, the Ijtihad will be acceptable if undertaken by liberal Muslims.

Being a liberal Muslim brings with it plethora of accusations and allegations. One of the commonly used allegations to browbeat the liberal Muslims is they being stooges of West, working at the behest of West and trying to Westernize Islam. West and its ideologies have been the most misunderstood by the Islamic Revivalists. When the Ulema do not have a logical or Islamic answer to an interpretation of Islam that is different than theirs, the simple escapism is to label it as Western whereas the reality is that West is most happy with traditional Ulema as it helps reinforce the Islamophobic and violent image of Islam. Liberal Muslims question the legitimacy of West and have the acumen to understand the capitalistic and imperialistic model of Global powers. The West in fact has been successful in exploiting and using these traditional Ulema and their interpretation of Islam for its own imperialistic goals whether be it the balkanization of USSR or retrograding the Arab Spring to bloody and bleak Arab Winter. The Western powers in fact do help and patronize the autocratic, authoritarian, sectarian and violent regimes like Saudi Arabia to survive. The survival is at the cost of denial of basic human rights and liberal values like freedom of speech, right to form associations and rule of law. So this allegation is wrong, infact traditional mullahs are patronized by West so that a retrogressive, redundant and regressive image of Islam is presented before the world.

The lack of liberal Muslim leadership is because most of them are afraid or in awe of the traditional Ulema. They shy away from the new interpretation of Islam because of community and Ulema backlash. Most of them suppress their inner call and lack courage to stand for the liberal values. The political parties too do not want to associate with any liberal Muslim faces that are controversial for their opinions because that will cut the vote share for them. Thus the liberal Muslims who are articulate and opinionated are marginalized even by the secular political parties. At last the liberal Muslims have failed to convince the Muslim masses and Ulema that they can be selfless and dedicated defenders of their community interests. Liberal Muslims have the task of bridging the divide between the traditional Ulema and themselves and initiate a dialogue process. They need to become role models by having strong personality and values that can inspire the masses to believe and follow them. It will take some time for the Indian liberal Muslim to take and secure the mantle of leadership, till then they need to occupy the spaces of social activism and interpretation of Islam.

M.H.A. Sikander is Writer-Activist based in Srinagar, Kashmir and can be reached at sikandarmushtaq@gmail.com

Courtesy: http://www.newageislam.com/

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However, unlike Guha and Hamid Dalwai, Dr. Engineer was convinced that Islam respected gender justice and provided for modern rights, including respect for diversity, freedom of expression and rights of non-Muslim minorities. In the controversy on Salman Rusdie’s Satanic Verses, he was not only against the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa, but also against the ban on the book, although he was equally vehemently against offending anybody’s faith as Rushdie had done. Dr. Engineer was not alone in the sub-continent in defending rationality and reason within the framework of Islam. He continued the tradition of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Maulana Shibli Nomani, Maulana Altaff Hussain Hali and philosopher poet Dr. Iqbal who called for continuous ijtihad – reinterpretation of Islam by each successive generation.

Guha and Hamid Dalwai, whom he approvingly quotes seem to suggest that modernity, rationality, individual interests against the community was possible only by giving up Islam. They seem to be unaware of the rich debates and rational Mu’tazilites. If Hamid Dalwai did not have any following within the community it is more because of his disdain for Islam out of ignorance of Islamic history and traditions, and attempt to superimpose Mahatma Phule’s Sarvajanik Satya Dharma onto Muslim community. Hamid Dalwai found himself isolated within the community. He was condemning the community and scoffing at their beliefs and calling upon them to give them up. When condemned and scoffed at, that too by a person having no contribution in their lives, people hold to their beliefs all the more steadfastly.

In order to change people, first of all one has to have clarity and convincingly deep knowledge of not only the goal post where one wants to lead people, but also thorough knowledge of what  their present beliefs and the malaise therein, source of the malaise and how to persuade people to change address the malaise. Hamid Dalwai knew where he wanted to lead members of the community to but little knowledge of Islamic traditions and history. His indifference to Islam did not help him achieve his objectives. Gradually the audience that supported him consisted of socialists and Hindu supremacists. Hindu supremacist had their political agenda – not to reform the Muslims but to support someone stigmatizing Islam. This further alienated the Muslims.

Rationalism within Islam
The Mu’tazilites adamantly defended the ideas of free will (ikhtiyar) and human freedom. Qur’an emphasises that believers should attain faith through the agency of thought. It commands the faithful to reflect. Mutazilites advance the doctrine of justice according to which some deeds are inherently just and some inherently unjust, and that human reason dictates that justice is good and must be practised, whereas injustice is evil and must be abstained from. For instance, truthfulness, trustworthiness, chastity and God-fearing are intrinsically good qualities, and falsehood, treachery, indecency, neglectfulness, etc. are intrinsically evil. Human reason, according to them, can independently judge (or perceive) the good or evil in things. Good or evil of some deeds can be judged by human reason independently of the commands of the Shari’ah. The Mutazilaites further believed that in case of conflict between reason and Hadith (Prophet’s statements), reason is to be preferred and it is possible to interpret the Qur’an with the help of reason.

Maulana Shibli Naumani distinguished modern science and modern philosophy on one hand, and religion on the other hand. Matters that were definitely and indisputably established on the basis of observation and experiment were called science, and those which were beyond the grasp of experiment came in the category of philosophy. He therefore found no conflict between science and religion as they had nothing to do with each other, and they addressed entirely different subject matters. For example the problem of weight of air, number of elements, chemical composition of water and such other matters did not concern religion but were in the domain of science.

Religion on the other hand was concerned with issues such as ‘did God exist?’ or ‘was there life after death?’ or reward and punishment and concepts of good and evil. The popular understanding of the majority of people is that religion cannot be scientific and rational on the one hand and science or rationalism is on the other hand, irreligious. One can therefore be either religious or rational. Maulana Shibli points out that religion can be rational, and indeed his understanding of Islam was that it was a rational and human centric religion. Religion guides followers in matters of notion of good and worthy life, laws to build harmonious societies, notions of justice and rights and duties of members of the society towards each other. Science may not be equipped to be concerned with these aspects. Science may discover laws of nature and properties of various elements which, for example, may equip human beings to harness nuclear energies. However, having discovered the impact of nuclear fission and fusion and measured the energies unleashed nuclear fusion and fission, humans still need to figure out what would be the good purpose for which nuclear fusion and fission are to be employed – for manufacturing nuclear bombs or to harness nuclear energy or neither? The latter comes within the domain of religion. The boundaries and demarcation of science and religion therefore has to be properly understood. Religion can be irrational, if the followers are required to follow its tenets blindly and without applying their mind or questioning the doctrines. However, religion can be rational if the followers are encouraged to apply their mind and critical faculties on various doctrines propounded and understand its meanings as times and context change.

Situation of Muslim Liberals
Muslim liberals are let down by the political class. The Congress Party patronized Muslim communal leadership by meeting their cultural demands which were easy to meet and without any cost to the ex-chequer. Some of the cultural demands of Muslim communal leaders to which Congress led Government agreed to were – holiday on Muslim festivals, assurance of maintaining minority character of Aligarh Muslim University, giving official status to Urdu language, banning Satanic Verses and denying Salman Rushdie visa to visit India, implementing Sharia law, among others.

The state’s policy under Congress rule confined the Muslim community within their cultural ghettos. The liberal leadership on the other hand demanded educational, livelihood and social inclusion; equality and citizenship rights. Though the liberal leadership raised demands of the economically and educationally excluded members of the community, they saw no possibility of liberals being able to achieve them. However, the cultural ghetto into which the community was lead, provided an opportunity to the Hindu supremacists to charge the Congress with appeasement of minorities.

The Hindu supremacist, who were ideologically and politically committed to the supremacy and hegemony of selective upper caste traditions, indulged in alarmist propaganda of ‘appeasement of minorities’ which would lead the country to second partition and threat of losing the Hindu ‘homeland’. The charge of ‘injustice to Hindus in their only homeland’ helped mobilization of Hindus by the supremacist accompanied with communal violence. With the state utterly failing in ensuring security; bringing perpetrators of violence against the community to justice and lack of reparation policy, the victims of violence had only one source of hope for relief and rehabilitation – communal leadership and God.

Besieged with communal violence, stigmatization and state violence, unity of the community was highly desired and could only be ensured by submission to faith as believed to be practiced since centuries. If being in cultural ghetto did not reduce the frequency and intensity of violence, it made violence somewhat more bearable for the faithful with God and community providing solace to the victims.

The liberals of the community were let down by the state which failed in its duties. Rather than seeing the context in which community’s cultural marker like burkas and skull caps are becoming more salient, Guha seems to lay blame at the door of the besieged community and lack liberal leadership for the cultural ghetto they are in. The Hindu supremacist and racists in the world also lay the blame at the door of Islam rather than the context in which particular reading of Islam becomes salient.

Liberals increasingly accept group cultural rights. It would be a folly to pit interest of individual against the community as an absolute doctrine. Interest of an individual speaking Tamil e.g. is in many ways common to the interests of the Tamil community. A Tamil citizen’s job opportunities e.g., may depend on how inclusive is public policy towards various languages in India. The liberals have a duty to ensure that state protects cultural rights of groups to the hilt as also of the dissenting individuals within the group. Liberals must push the state to ensure security of all citizens along with equality, liberty and fraternity. Individuals within different groups would then be in a position to liberate members of their groups from hegemonic elite and their obscurantism, dogmatism, revivalism and traditionalism.

While we must oppose obscurantism, dogmatism, revivalism and traditionalism, the liberals too must examine these trends within them.

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