Community service
In the last 60 years of Independence, no madrasa, including the great Dar ul
Uloom at Deoband, has produced a single scholar, SA Siddiqui, Chairman of the
National Commission of Minority Educational Institutions and former Delhi High
Court judge, said recently. Modernisation of madrasas would also help prevent
the recurrence of a Lal Masjid-type incident in India, he said. Religious
bigotry and ignorance drive people to use violence in the name of Islam.
Professor Syed Iqbal Hasnain, former Vice-Chancellor, University of Calicut,
has written: The time has come for the believers of Islam to take a closer
look at the original teachings of the Quran and the Prophet and to identify the
point where matters took their own turn to fuel radicalism and extension. It
has been observed that the senseless interpretation of Islamic concepts and
terms by radical Islamists and imams is acting as the theological inspiration
to violence. Jehad is one of them.
Muslim intellectuals in Europe and North America have a fine tradition of
erudition and reflection on living up to the verities of Islam in modern,
especially non-Muslim, societies. It is the South Asian, especially Indian,
Muslim who has been woefully remiss in this regard.
The noted British scholar, Ziauddin Sardar, holds, It is true that the vast
majority of Muslims abhor violence and terrorism, and that the Quran and
various schools of Islamic law forbid the killing of innocent civilians. It is
true, as the vast majority of Muslims believe, that the main message of Islam
is peace. It is equally true that terrorists are a product of a specific
mindset that has deep roots in Islamic historyand are provided solace and
spiritual comfort by scholars who use the Quran and Islamic law to justify
their actions and fan the hatred... It is the case in all religious and all
ideologies down through every age.
This does not absolve Muslims of their responsibility. In discharging it, they
should not be inhibited by the fact that hate groups hostile to them would
exploit their critiques of fellow Muslims.
Sardar recalls the puritanical Kharijites, who were responsible for the
murder of Ali, the fourth Caliph and the Prophets son-in-law. They believed
that history had come to an end with the Quran and pronounced everyone who
disagreed with them as infidel. This tradition has three characteristics it
is ahistoric, devoid of any notion of progress or human evolution; it is
monolithic, disclaiming diversity and dissent; and it is aggressively
self-righteous and claims a right to do good and prevent evil deeds..
Violence flows naturally.
We now have neo-Kharijites on our hands. US President George W Bushs war on
terror only wins them support. They belong to a ruinous strand in Muslim
tradition based on a false conception of Islam. Sardar is, therefore, right
when he asserts that the fight against terrorism is also an internal Muslim
struggle within Islam. Indeed, it is a struggle for the very soul of Islam.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, founder of the Aligarh Muslim University, realised this
and propounded a rational interpretation of the Quran. His colleague Chiragh
Ali was bolder still. His neglected classic, Jihad (1885), asserts that the
Muhammadan Common Law is by no means divine or superhuman. It mostly consists
of uncertain traditions. Arabian usages and customs, some frivolous and
fortuitous analogical deductions from the Quran and a multitudinous array of
casuistical sophistry of the canonical legists.
Whatever happened to disrupt this trend? It was explained by the
poet-philosopher Iqbal to Akbar Shah Mujibabadi in the late 1930s. The
influence of the professional maulvis had greatly decreased owing to Sir Syed
Ahmad Khans movement. But the Khilafat Committee, for the sake of political
fatwas, had restored their influence among Indian Muslims.
In his presidential address to the Muslim League on December 29, 1930, Iqbal
had urged Indian Muslims to rid Islam of the stamp that Arabian imperialism
was forced to give it to mobilise its laws, its education, its culture, and to
bring them into closer contact with its [Islams] own original spirit and with
the spirit of modern times.
Iqbal held that the claim of the present generation of Muslim liberals to
re-interpret the foundational legal principles, in the light of their own
experience and the altered conditions of modern life, is, in my opinion,
perfectly justified. The teaching of the Quran that life is a process of
progressive creation necessitates that each generation, guided but unhampered
by the work of its predecessors, should be permitted to solve its own
problems... In view of the intense conservatism of the Muslims in India, Indian
judges cannot but stick to what are called standard works.
However, Islam also has a strong reformist tradition, of which the
Mutazilites were pioneers. They made reason the very criterion of religious
law. Nicholas D. Kristof rightly points out that while the thread of
fundamentalism is real in Islam, so is the thread of reform. The 21st century
may become to Islam what the 16th was to Christianity, for even in hardline
States like Iran, you meet Martin Luthers who are pushing for an Islamic
Reformation. One of the most surprising elements of this push for reform has to
do with the emergence of a school called feminist Islam.
Tunisian scholar Mohamed Charfs book, Islam and Liberty, exposes the
historical misunderstanding that led to a theological junta monopolising the
discourse. Intellectual stagnation preceded revivalism and its offspring,
fundamentalism.
An articulate, erudite brand of Muslim scholars are giving battle to these
forces Leila Ahmed (Egypt and the US), Nasr Abu Zaid (Egypt), Mohammed Arkoun
(Algeria and France), Hsna Hanafi (Egypt), Fethullah Gulen (Turkey), Mohsen
Kadivar (Iran), Fatima Mernissi (Morocco), Tariq Ramadan (Switzerland) ,
Muhammad Shahrour (Syria), Abdolkarim Soroush (Iran), Mohamed Talbi (Tunisia)
and Amina Wadud (US). They are little noticed in South Asia. The mullah,
inferior in learning and integrity, monopolises discourse.
One thinker deserves particular attention. Shabbir Akhtar writes, After
developing a great rational philosophical tradition, the adherents of Islam
have lapsed into an intellectual lethargy that has already lasted half a
millennium.
He counsels Muslims to be reflective, to be intellectually honest enough to
face frankly and conscientiously the tribunal of secular reason and to do so
within faithful parameters.
The terrorist challenge is but part of a wider challenge. Muslims must face
it for their own good. As the Quran says, Verily never will God change the
conditions of a people until they change it themselves.
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© Copyright 2007 Hindustan Times
saiyed shahbazi
www.shahbazcenter.org
