Islam in introspection

[Guest guest]

This was published in the Saturday, Aug 28, 2004 Hindu.

 

http://www.hindu.com/2004/08/28/stories/2004082801541000.htm

 

Moderate voices in Islam

 

By Hasan Suroor

 

A community freed from the constant pressure of having to justify and explain itself is likely to feel more confident to take a harder look at itself.

 

 

 

IT IS perhaps too early to start celebrating but two new — and controversial — books on Islam have raised hopes that the long-awaited debate in the Muslim community over reforms may have begun, at last. One is by a United Kingdom-based Pakistani scholar who is also a practising Muslim with solid grounding in Islamic theology; and the other by a Canadian Muslim woman broadcaster who calls herself a "Muslim refusenik," someone who refuses to "join an army of automatons in the name of Allah."

 

Both Ziauddin Sardar (Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim) and Irshad Manji (The Trouble with Islam) write from the "inside" and both are heavily critical of Islam and their Muslim brethren. Though they approach the issues differently, the conclusions that they reach are the same: without urgent reforms in the Islamic world and a radical change in the way Muslims perceive themselves and their religion in the modern world, the community is doomed.

 

Mr. Sardar is a devout believer, and has studied Islam closely — seeking answers to questions which the "establishment Islam" pretends do not exist. He has worked extensively with Islamic groups in Britain and the Muslim world — an experience which left him profoundly disturbed, and worried that Islam was in the danger of being hijacked by right-wing preachers and "leaders" engaged in promoting ignorance and blind faith. His critique is steeped in deep scholarship and the questions he raises are at the heart of what has gone wrong with Islam.

 

I am deliberately harping on Mr. Sardar's Islamic credentials to emphasise that, given his background, what he says cannot be dismissed as simply another Islamophobic rant. His analysis will not make pleasant reading to those who believe that Islam has all the answers, and anyone who calls for a debate or reform is anti-Islam, if not plain kafir. He says he found such people "repugnant.Islam, for them, was an ideology that allowed for no imperfections, no deviation, and, in the final analysis, no humanity. This is why I found so many of them so repugnant."

 

Ms. Manji, on the other hand, comes from a very different background and fits in more with the idea of an "average" Muslim — someone who happens to be a Muslim and sees it more as a cultural baggage. She is interested in Islam in terms of how it affects her personal freedoms rather than in its spiritual aspects. To her what is important is how her faith affects her in her daily life, especially in relation to the individual freedoms that her Western peers enjoy.

 

As a host of Queer Television, a TV and internet series about gays and lesbians, she was apparently bombarded with hate mail from both Christian and Muslim "fundamentalists." What bothered her was that while among Toronto's Christians there were also those who wrote to present the liberal viewpoint on the subject, no Muslim ever came forward with anything resembling a liberal perspective. "Any time I aired anti-gay comments from Bible-citing Christians, other Christians would be sure to follow up with rival, tolerant interpretations. That never happened, when Muslims bawled me out," she writes.

 

Like Mr. Sardar, she also underlines the "rigidity" of Islam. But while he blames the mullahs for turning Islam into an inflexible, almost intolerant, set of beliefs and practices, Ms. Manji finds fault with Islam itself — an argument which misses the historical context of Islam, ironically, much the same way as the religious Right fails or refuses to recognise the social and cultural specificity of many of Islam's teachings.

 

But this is not intended to be a review, and the reason I have brought up these two books is to refute theories about an alleged "conspiracy" of silence among Muslims to protect Islam from any criticism. Of course, you can argue that two books do not add up to a debate but, according to those who move in informed Muslim circles, there is a real "chatter" going on — and the debate is taking place at different levels. "It is happening on the campuses, in local newspapers and journals, in community centres, among women's groups and round the dinner table," says a London-based Left-wing Pakistani commentator.

 

Arguably, it has not taken the form of organised public debate, and the voices are not as many or as loud and outspoken as they should be. As Mr. Sardar and Ms. Manji repeatedly stress, an overwhelming majority of the global Muslim community remains cut off from the world of modern ideas, stuck in a time-warp and refusing to engage in the big issues of the day such as democracy, women's rights, personal freedoms or alternative lifestyles.

 

Yet one can sense signs of restlessness and there is an increasing acknowledgement that Islam and its followers have reached a fork in the road: if they do not abandon their present course, they will end up in a cul-de-sac of their own making. The belated but growing intervention of liberal Muslims is significant. Until as recently as a decade ago, the liberal Muslim could not give a damn to "Muslim issues." Indeed, a liberal Muslim was seen as a contradiction in terms: you were either a Muslim or a liberal. You could not possibly be both. As much as the rest of the community saw the liberal Muslim intelligentsia as something outside the pale, such Muslims, too, regarded themselves as a "secular" elite, with little interest in "sectional" Muslim issues.

 

But events in the 1990s brought about a profound change in their attitude. In India, the rise of right-wing Hindu nationalism and, in the West, attempts to whip up Islamophobia by portraying Islam as the new "enemy" after the decline of Communism led to an aggressive assertion of Muslim identity across the board. And liberal Muslims, who had remained aloof, were provoked to speak up, prompted on the one hand by a concern that a great civilisation and faith was in danger of being hijacked by religious extremists; and, on the other, by the fear that if they did not intervene to halt the slide they too would be dragged down by such forces. In the words of Mirza Ghalib, they were concerned: "Hum to doobenge sanam, tum ko bhi le doobengein" (we are going to drown anyway, but we will take you also with us).

 

In the wake of 9/11, more and more Muslims have spoken up arguing for reform in the Muslim world but in the media and political circles — not to mention the pubs and playgrounds — it is the fanatic fringe that is still seen as the true representatives of Muslims. Invariably, what we hear on TV and read, even in "quality" broadsheets, are sensational views while moderate voices are relegated to the graveyard slot.

 

For the debate in the Muslim community to move forward, it is important that the media project the alternative Muslim/Islamic viewpoint more aggressively in order to change the perception that all Muslims are extremists. Once the moderate face of the community comes into public view it is likely to have a knock-on effect on anti-Muslim prejudices leading, hopefully, to Muslims shedding their siege mentality.

 

A community, freed from the constant pressure of having to justify and explain itself, is likely to feel more relaxed and confident to take a harder look at itself. In the present climate which one British commentator has likened to the Cold War, when you were either with Americans or "in bed with the Reds," pro-reform Muslims have been reluctant to speak up fearing that they might be accused of sleeping with the "enemy." The fact that they have broken their silence must be welcomed but any attempt to approach their criticism in a way that might pit them against their own community or to seize it to push other agendas can only harm the cause of a debate, which has barely begun.