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Why is the west listening to Hirsi Ali?
By
Mahmood Delkhasteh
Recently, a review of Hirsi Ali’s book Infidel in The
Economist (‘A critic of
Islam’, 8 February) described
her as a “chameleon of a woman”,
who has been “happy to exploit”
the West’s “tendency to seek
simplistic explanations”.
Indeed, many western
intellectuals are championing
her ideas and demanding they be
given greater exposure. She says
what they love to hear, and
blinded by this love they have
failed to be critical of her;
they failed to use the quality
of mind, which is ostensibly one
of the greatest assets of
western intellectual life.
On the one hand, Hirsi Ali attacks Islam itself by inducing blanket
assumptions based on her own
personal experiences. On the
other hand, she idealizes and
glorifies western culture,
primarily its intellectual
assets. However, a critical
approach to her work reveals
that she neither has sufficient
knowledge about Islam to make
the claims she does, nor is she
knowledgeable about the
fundamental principles of the
western thought. In other
words, Ali’s weakness is not
that she criticises traditional
Islam, but that she
essentialises Islam and equates
it solely with repression and
backwardness. This indicates
major shortcomings in both her
knowledge of Islam and of
western intellectual science,
for which she claims to be
fighting.
In order to demonstrate this, I have I decided to analyse one of
her most controversial
statements from a theological
perspective. In Infidel
(2007), she argues that
the Koran is the work of man and
not of God. Consequently we
should feel free to interpret
and adapt it to modern times,
rather than bending over
backwards to live as the first
believers did in a distant,
terrible time.
Here we can ask, what makes her so certain that the Koran is the
work of man (i.e., Mohammad) and
not God? She obviously rejects
the Moslem belief that the Koran
is the word of God, descended to
Mohammad. By making such a
claim, what she actually does is
to argue that God has nothing to
do with it as it is the work of
Mohammad. Can any other
conclusion deduced from that
statement? If not, then, one
can thus safely assume that when
she states “the Koran is the
work of man and not of God”,
what she actually means is that
the Koran has nothing to do with
God but with Mohammad.
Now we can interact with her claim in a more effective manner and I
can re-ask my initial question:
Does she introduce any support to back up her claim? No she does
not. So, one can argue that her
claim about the Koran is based
on a mere belief and there is no
rational reasoning behind it.
Moslems, on the other hand,
believe the Koran is the word of
God. (I am saying this for the
sake of argument; otherwise the
Koran interact with this issue
differently). So it seems that
these two opposing claims are
based on beliefs and rationality
stands outside of both. In that
sense she can not be what she
claims to be: “an enlightened
rationalist” since she has made
an important claim without
providing any reason for it. So
the question is, what makes her
belief superior to a Moslem
belief, or where is her claim of
rationality situated in this
claim?
The mere fact that she thinks that the Koran can only be
interpreted if we accept that it
was written by a man and not God
also shows her limited knowledge
of the philosophy of knowledge
and her even more limited
knowledge of Islam. Otherwise
she would have known that any
text, irrespective of its
author, by definition has to be
interpreted in order to be
understood. In other words,
discourse analysis is one of the
methods for interacting with any
book and in such method talk
about the author of the book is
totally irrelevant as the
interpretation of a text has
nothing to do with the author.
More precisely, the statement indicates that she has little or no
knowledge of modern hermeneutics
and that understanding any word
requires interpretations and
every text in order to be
understood has to be
interpreted.
Furthermore, she should have
known that there are countless
interpretations of the Koran
which run in various directions,
from totalitarian
interpretations (i.e., of the
Wahabites in Saudi Arabia) to
the most democratic and
humanitarian ones (i.e., mystic
philosophers like Rumi, Mehdi
Bazargan and A. H. Banisadr from
Iran). All of these
wide-ranging and opposing
interpretations are made by
theologians and Islamists who
believed that the Koran is the
word of God. Ali (the most
authoritative figure on Koran,
after Mohammad, famously stated:
“this
Koran is the written line and
situated between two covers. It
does not talk for itself and
inevitably it has to be
translated/ interpreted”
So, this belief never prevented anybody from interpreting the text.
Hence, once again, there is not
a necessary correlation between
believing that the “Koran is the
work of man” and attempts to
have a modern interpretation out
of it. Making such statement, at
least, is therefore completely
futile.
Within Islamic discourses there is a distinction between the
official closed corpus (the
current Koran) and “Mos’haf”,
which means the distinction
between words that are the exact
words of God and those that are
open to interpretation (i.e.,
not the exact words). The
“Motazelieh” (rationalists) and
“Ashaaereh” (theologians) were
debating this since the 9th
century. The only thing, which
these Islamic scholars have in
common is the belief that while
the meaning hasn’t changed, the
context/ vocabularies and the
reading of it is very much under
scrutiny.
If she knew even the basics of
this sort of information, she
would not say that the Koran is
not the work of God but of man,
since the complexity of such
relationship is enormous and
only someone with a basic
knowledge of the field can make
such black and white assertion.
In addition, her conclusion fails her argument. If her claim is
correct and the Koran is the
work of man and not God, then
her superceding argument:
“…consequently we should feel
free to interpret and adapt it
to modern times, rather than
bending over backwards to live
as the first believers did in a
distant, terrible time", is
purely nonsensical. Why?
Her suggestion is aimed at
Moslems who have to interpret
and adopt the Koran to modern
times. However, if a Moslem
believes that the Koran is
actually the work of Mohammad
and not God, then this by
definition would mean he had
lied to them, which would
disqualify him as a prophet.
If a Moslem reaches that conclusion, then he/she will cease to be a
Moslem and Islam will become a
non-religion for him/her. It
would thus be foolish to expect
such a person to adapt to modern
times a Book that she/he has
lost belief in instead of
searching for new belief system.
Finally, one should also ask who her target audience is. Moslems
can not be her target audience
(despite of her apparent
target); she should have known
better that when She issues a
fatwa in which tells those
Moslems that their religion is
based on a lie and Mohammad was
a liar, they will have nothing
to do with her argument since
they fundamentally disagree with
it. So by issuing such a fatwa
she closes the gate of dialogue
and communication with Moslems.
So again, here is the question:
Who is her target audience? It
can only be non-Moslems who
share the view that Islam is the
word of Mohammad and who have
political interest in what she
is saying. Hence, they already
agree with her statement and
share the same point of view.
So here is the following
question: Why she is preaching
to the converted? She has
nothing new to say to these
people, but still continues to
speak to them and is given ample
space for it. What does she get
out of it? Why do they pretend
that they are hearing something
new? |
