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The Death of a Discourse
With American hegemony firmly established,
now we hear of an American Islam
which, as Iran’s spiritual leader
Ali Al-Khamnaei has complained,
is ‘a backward Islam that falls
in line with American principles
and Western ideals’. Khamnaei and
other leaders of the Muslim world
have reason to worry. The recent
years have witnessed an upsurge
in modern day messiah of Muslims
who look at Islam from the tainted
glass of American foreign policy
and call Mr.Bush ‘the Muslim World
Savoir’. To them or perhaps more
appropriately for them, ‘Bush
is bringing liberation, not war’.
We have Muslims in America who would
openly advocate, nay rather incite,
that ‘an invasion of Iraq would
be the single best path to reform
Arab world’. Then there are enthusiasts
ready to fight in Iraq ‘with America’
and ‘for America’ as they see it
a ‘divine commitment’, ‘a covenant
with the nation’. This, then, is
American Islam.
Judging from the buzzword in Riyadh,
Cairo or Islamabad, this Muslim
passion for America is not even
on the fringe, though. The stronger
and dominant voice of Islam sees
in Iraq a conflict not only between
the oppressor and the oppressed,
colonizer and the colonized, more
so they look at it as a battle between
Islam and Kufr, a Jihad activity.
What goes on in Iraq is indeed a
painful scenario but looking at
it in black and white will be an
oversimplification of the whole
complex multi-faceted issue. Among
the Bathists, the Islamists, the
nationalist are also people who
have discovered in the resistance
movement an opportunity for advancing
their own petty agenda. True, imperialism
of any sort must be resisted but
in order to support and strengthen
the resistance we need not twist
religious dicta. For tomorrow if
the final outcome is different from
the one expected of a Jihad – and
this is very likely in the Iraqi
case as it happened in the Mujahedeen’s
Afghanistan – it will only add further
disillusionment to the Islamist’s
camp. The neo-Wahabi Ulema who have
recently issued a fatwa declaring
Resistance in Iraq a purely Islamic
Jihad, a religious obligation on
the faithful, have gone a bit too
far in their love for Iraq. However,
the neo-Wahabis are not alone in
their use, rather misuse, of religious
vocabulary. The same is true with
the mainstream Ulema and religious
organizations. They have either
lent their credibility to the Jihad
fervour or preferred to keep quite
‘in the greater interest of the
Ummah’.
The issue we take up here for consideration
is not which side of the conflict
one should be on, but about how our
religious sensibilities should be
put to work with honesty and vital
issues be undertaken with an open
end. Intellectual dishonesty or
carelessness may appear to be enhancing
a struggle for the time being but
in the long run it shakes the very
ideological foundation that we stand
on. The fatwaic vocabulary, intended
to suppress any healthy discussion,
has left the concerned Muslims in
tatters; how come the same Islam
that allows Muslims of the American
variety to fight for America in
Iraq may ask Muslims of other parts
of the world to put a fierce resistance
to the same invading army?
Be they upholders of the American
Islam or their Wahabi counter parts
or even the religious seers in Islamic
Iran, they equally miss the point
that instead of looking at the issue
afresh, and in the Qur'ani paradigm,
they have been rather mislead by
a fatwaeic epistemology that leaves
no room for any further enquiry
or creative debate. Fatwaeic thinking
is not necessarily loaded with fiqhi
jargons; it is a closed-mind set
that denies any need for reconsideration.
The fatwaeic mind relies mainly
on its personal whims, likes and
dislikes. This closed mind-set has
virtually ruled out any possibility
of a creative debate within the
Ummah on issues of vital importance
bringing us to a dead-end, a situation
that may rightly be termed as the
death of a discourse. And this in
fact is the mother of all crises,
a vicious circle where the Ummah
is trapped in for many centuries.
The situation demands that we look
at the Qur’an afresh, in our own
specific context, to discover a
fresh answer. But the death of a
creative discourse amongst us rules
out any such opportunity.
Let us explain. In Pakistan, during
Ayyub Khan’s Presidency, the issue
was tabled for a public debate that
if Pakistan had to become an Islamic
state which of the four or five
schools of fiqh was to be given
official patronage. The Ulema notwithstanding
fully aware of the destructive potential
of the question simply preferred
to evade any serious enquiry into
the crux of our malaise saying that
the fiqh hanafi as being
the fiqh of majority of Pakistani
Muslims should get the official
status. We conveniently ignored
the fact that those who adhere to
a particular school of fiqh do so
because they think that their school
of fiqh is closer to the
truth and therefore they will not
be willing to give up their version
of the truth. The creation of modern
Pakistan and the new realities in
the twentieth century were demanding
from thinking Muslims and Ulema
a thorough probe into the psychological,
historical and the socio-political
bases of the conflicting fiqhi
schools that look at the Revelation
as a codified, nay rather fossilized
instructions, leaving no room for
a purely Qur’anic discourse to start
afresh. Had this process of enquiry
been initiated in independent Pakistan
the country would certainly wore
a different look today.
We should not loose sight of the
fact that the Qur’an is an ever-continuing
discourse, an invitation to think,
enquire, and keep formulating till
an unachievable perfection. In the
Qur'an, the oft repeated qul
(say) in response to qaloo
(they ask) is indicative of the
fact the Qur'an does not require
from us to be a prisoner of fatwaeic
mind set. Instead, it demands from
us to keep our hearts and minds
always open (ام
على قلوب اقفالها) and make good use of the reasoning faculties. Every individual is required
to employ his own mind. Relying
solely on the wisdom of the dead
is a non-starter for seekers of
truth. Salaf worshipping,
no matter whosoever pious our Elders
had happened to be, is no different
from the mental slavery of the Mushrekoon
that receives God’s utter condemnation:
وجدنا آباءنا كذلك يفعلون
The process of self-enquiry and
the discourse on Man’s role and
position in the universe does not
stop even after one’s submission
to God. A deeper understanding of
the universe and the awe that such
an understanding brings to a God-fearing
heart empowers the individual for
a leadership role:انما
يخشى الله من عباده العلماء.
The believer, as he is an integral
part of the Qur’anic discourse is
never weary of a creative answer,
not even in wavering moments of
crises: ام حسبتم ان تدخلواالجنة
ولما ياتكم مثل الذين خلوا من قبلكم
مستهم الباساء و الضراء وزلزلواحتى
يقول الرسول والذينءامنوامعه متى
نصرالله الا ان نصرالله قريب.
The death of an internal debate
within the Ummah has in fact left
us fragmented. The sublime Revelation
of the Qur'an, the uniting cohesive
force of Tawhid has been so fenced
and re-fenced by the fuqahah and
mufassiroon, by the historians and
the mohaddisoon, that a fresh and
creative approach to the Qur’an
is made almost impossible. The fences
are so effective that in our enthusiasm
to go by the Qur’an we eventually
find ourselves drawn to a mindless
imitation of the Salaf Saleheen.
And this is certainly a replica
of a dead nation that once was deprived
of her originality and creative
thinking and condemned to live a
life in aping:
كونوا قردة خاسعين
An internal debate within the
house of Islam holds promise of
pulling down the
pseudo-religious identities such
as Hanafi, Shafei, Maleki
or Hambali etc. Had we inherited
a continuing discourse from the
great fuqaha whom we look at as
sacred sources of religion, a set
of divinely ordained people, the
situation would certainly have been
quite different. We cannot simply
turn a blind eye to the historical
factors responsible for the canonization
of the four schools of fiqh in the
9th century. The canonisation
or recognition of the four schools
among some forty existing schools
was a compromise formula intended
to end the internal strife. It cannot
and should not be taken as a divine
scheme. If the four great scholars
of the past can be given the right
to formulate a code of living for
us based on their specific understanding
of the Revelation, can we deny the
same honour to a fifth or a sixth
capable individual simply for their
late arrival in history? No doubt,
there have been some serious attempts
in the past to roll back the culture
of fossilised discourse. From Al-Zaheri
to Ibn Hazm and from Ibne Taimiaya
to Mohammed bin Abdulwahhab attempts
were made to break the deadlock
in Islamic thought. Though inherently
non-starters, as these efforts were,
nevertheless, they paved way for
future reform activities. One should
not downplay the iron-fist unity
that the Wahabi Islam was eventually
able to bring to the holy Harem
in Makkah reducing the four simultaneous
fiqhi prayers into one. However,
the movement once so full of life
and vigour gradually turned their
revolutionary icons like Ibne Taimiyah
and Mohammed bin Abdulwahab into
cult leaders, belittling all hopes
for a return to the pristine purity
of Islam.
The virtual closure of the Qur'an
and building interpretative fences
around it eventually resulted in
the closing of the Muslim mind.
Muslims of the later centuries had
no option but to breathe in the
fiqhi milieu of the Abbasid Baghdad.
Living in the 21st century
we have an uncomfortable feeling that
those who command our religious
life are the great seers of the
past, long dead and who cannot be
blamed for not knowing enough of
our specific context. For centuries
we Muslims are without a living
leader, without a living mind to
interact with the Qur’an:
يا رب ان قومى اتخذوا هذا القرآن
مهجورا
The Prophet has assured us, as the
tradition has it, that Allah will
elevate the nation that upholds
the Qur’an. One wonders, why then
the Muslim Ummah lags behind and
always find itself on a slippery-slope.
None can match our passion for the
Qur’an; from its careful recitation
and memorization to the distribution
of nicely printed and decorated
copies. We have built
a tradition that no other nation
can boast of. Yet we are an ailing
nation knowing not what
it really amounts to uphold the
Book of God. As most of us have
come to regard the extra-scriptural
material as a natural extension
of the Qur'anic worldview, we mistakenly
hold that the fiqhi recreation
of Islam is a mere simplified version
and the implementation of the
fiqh, though juristic dicta
of the past can be as good as the
Qur'an itself. Such mistaken notions
that hold human interpretative activities
infallible create serious misgivings
about the nature and scope of any
future Muslim civilization.
Our elevation through the Qur'an
is only possible if we are willing
to interact with the Qur'an on our
own and have the guts and courage
to accept the challenge of Revelation.
The Qur'an is an open invitation,
an all-embracing book, a solace
for the entire mankind. It calls
for open-mindedness, greater tolerance,
respect and acceptance of the other,
justice and dignity for all. The
true Tawhidi paradigm enables the
believer to look at the entire human
race as children of one God in need
of solace and salvation, and at himself,
by virtue of a follower of the Prophet,
as a benefactor to the humanity. The
nations that control the world today
are probably better embodiment of
these ideals than us. And this is
the secret of their leadership role.
While we, torn in hair-splitting fiqhi debate, find it difficult
to grant the same right to dignified
living to people of other faith
communities or even Muslims of a
different hue. The fall of the Taliban
was an emotional setback for the
Ummah, but it was very much along
the SunnatAllah, the laws of nature.
Those who cannot embrace their own
brothers and sisters in faith how
can they be entrusted with the responsibility
of global leadership? Away from
any fiqhi interruptions or interpolations
we must recreate the universal Qur'anic
vision of peace and justice for
all. Unless we make a decisive return
to the Qur’an the conflicting versions
of Islam will keep us haunting and
the much chanted slogans like ‘Islam
is the solution’ or ‘Qur'an is the
Answer’ will remain zombiefied and
Muslims will be seen as a fossilized
nation where a creative intellectual activity
has come to an end.
Rashid
Shaz
New Delhi
November 01, 2004
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