On the Women Protection Bill in Pakistan...

A MIMETIC RELIGIOSITY

Maryam Sakeenah

The refusal of the Pakistani religious right to allow the criminalization of domestic violence does not just reflect misogyny and a sense of insecurity over a perceived loss of patriarchal control. On a deeper level, it shows a mindset that reduces religion to a mere mimetic replication of the first Islamic society of Arabia over fourteen centuries ago.

One of the major justifications given by clerics for opposing the Women Protection Bill prescribing punishments for domestic violence is that such a law is essentially ‘against the Shariah’, as it innovates laws not hitherto specified by the primary sources of religion.

This mindset has surfaced elsewhere too- one of its starkest manifestations is ISIS’s revival of institutionalized slavery as an ‘Islamic’ practice, as slavery had not been explicitly criminalized by Islam.

The problem with this thesis is that it is literalist in interpretation and mimetic in implementation. This literalism and mimesis vindicate and endorse as ‘Islamic’ many an authoritatian and misogynistic practices dating from the time and place in which Islam was first set, unacceptable today in the light of the fundamental rights and principles over which humanity has achieved a quiet, universal consensus.

But what needs to be examined is whether Islam actually calls for an exclusively literalist reading of its sources and a mimetic replication of seventh century Arabia everywhere and at all times?

The Quran and even its elaboration in hadith stipulate few legislations, especially for phenomena characteristic of modern society. There is a wisdom in this silence- it understands the essential condition of human society- flux. This means that as societies evolve and grow over time, their needs change, and for a law system to be relevant, it must be flexible and adaptive to novel situations and conditions as they arise. Hence there is a deliberate purpose in this silence- to allow space for lawmaking relevant to the time and place. Yet the sources of Islam are complete in themselves- because they leave pointers, guidelines and suggestions that must inspire and lead such lawmaking in the right direction.

This understanding was not lost on the earliest generation after the Prophet (PBUH) who made Ijtihad a vital institution for progressive juristic innovation, such as Umar (R.A)’s innovations in the divorce laws to cater to the trends in his time.

Secondly, the purpose of law is to safeguard values which are at the core of Islam. The legal aspect of the shariah exists to protect the ‘maqasid ul shariah’- the core values. At times such law is explicitly laid down by the sources. Often, it is not. The scholars of Islam are in agreement that to ensure the achievement of the maqasid, juridical innovation may be made within the parameters defined by Islamic sources. Hence, Ijtihad.

One of these core values is human dignity and sanctity of one’s personal integrity. When a woman goes through domestic abuse and violence, it violates her dignity and respect as a human being and her fundamental rights as a partner in marriage. There is absolutely no equivocation in Islamic sources about this being condemnable behavior. The acceptability of domestic violence as the husband’s prerogative in Arabia predated Islam. Nor is the absence in the Quran and sunnah of a fixed penal law regarding it a bar to formulating such a law. There is no equivocation in the sources of Islam regarding the reprehensibility of domestic violence. By making gentle physical admonition exclusively tolerable in extreme cases of ‘nushuz’ (rebellion/defiance as in the case of unabashed disloyalty) and only after exhausting all other preferred strategies, Islam actually rejects domestic violence as the man’s prerogative to have his way with his spouse. The strictest conditions are laid down to ensure that neither pain is inflicted nor a mark left. Islam does not really require of men to put this exceptional permissibility to action in any situation at all. Simultaneously, the Prophetic conduct shows this never really has to be done, and there are better ways to resolve marital discord. He said, "How does anyone of you beat his wife as he beats the stallion camel and then be intimate with her?” (Bukhari, vol. 8, Hadith 68)  

The Quran says that spouses are to ‘dwell in tranquility with each other’ (Ar-Rum 21). It instructs husbands to ‘Live with them on a footing of kindness and equity.’ (An-Nisaa 19) 

In a society where honour killings, acid throwing, domestic and sexual violence are far too common, legislating in order to curb these horrendous practices works well to fulfill the maqasid of the shariah. Any legislation to ensure the provision and protection of the human rights recognized by Islam is commendable, just like the Prophet (PBUH)’s praise for the pre Islamic peacemaking document ‘Half ul Fuzul’ which laid down rights.

While the Women Protection Bill needs to be examined and modified to rule out its misuse and there can be a healthy debate around it, there can be no doubt that in its objective it fulfills the demand Islam makes on us_ to deter violence against the vulnerable and provide access to justice.

While constructive criticism and suggestion should be welcomed, the tirade from the religious against the law is tragic in that it seems to imply that Islam stands on the side of the male abuser and slights the issue of domestic violence. That is a dangerous and ugly untruth which ought to have been dispelled by those who claim to stand for Islam’s defence.      

Addressing the issue of the revival of slavery as ‘Islamic’, Michael Perez writes, ‘…we must refuse the position that limits our contemporary ethical horizons. To do so, we can take the Prophet’s statements against slavery as our contemporary responsibility… Such a perspective is critical today… Muslims have a role to play in the elaboration of Islam, and push forth a future in which slavery is no longer a question.’

Those who insist on an uncreative mimetic religiosity need to remember what Iqbal had meant when he wrote, ‘The movers have gone ahead… the unmoving ones have been crushed.’

ISIS: the need to understand

THE AUDACIOUS VENTURE TO UNDERSTAND

 Maryam Sakeenah

A good deal has been said about ISIS being a grotesque travesty of Islam and a defiant rejection of all that is commonly held to be moral and humane. Islamic scholars from a variety of denominations have come forward with a single voice to condemn it as a grave wrong, and this of course was vital and timely. However, condemnation alone misses a vital point; it flatly rests on the surface of a much deeper phenomenon.

It is more helpful to engage in an effort to understand- because when groups like ISIS emerge, we are warned that something about our collective humanity has gone terribly wrong. When human beings take up ruthless violence against one another, it shakes our faith in humanity. And yet the perpetrators and oppressors are not any less human than the rest of us- so what disfigured our humanity that we became capable of systematically inflicting pain on others and then celebrating it in the name of ideology?

Phenomena like ISIS are not rare in human history. But to begin to solve a recurring problem we do not need to just condemn, but to understand. A serious and honest effort at understanding is essential because when we engage in it we identify the deep-seated grievances and pent-up feelings of being wronged without redress that fuel the vicious cycle of reactionary violence.

But understanding becomes difficult when we ‘otherize’ and then condemn the ‘other’ whom we have created in our morally superior self-perception. The interconnectedness of a globalized world shows the error in viewing phenomena in isolation from contexts and other events- contemporary or historical. So much of what we see happening today can somehow or the other be traced to events that took place in the recent or not-so-recent past.

It certainly adds a deeper dimension to our understanding to remind ourselves that ISIS was born in the detention camps of the US in Iraq, and got recruits from refugee facilities during and shortly after the US invasion. This gives the context to the radicalization of many of the human beings who now associate themselves with the group.

Lest we forget, Iraq was invaded in 2003 on an utterly false pretext of the threat of what was virtually a dysfunctional and impotent weapons programme. The official strategy of the invasion was ‘Shock and Awe’, which explicitly called for ‘paralyzing the country... destroying food production, water supplies and infrastructure’; the strategy involved the use of chemical weapons- white phosphorus, to name one- in civilian areas which has so far led to hundreds of thousands of stillbirths and birth defects other than instant fatalities. 740,000 women are war widows, 4.5 million were rendered homeless. Hundreds of thousands were made refugees during the brutal invasion of Fallujah alone that left 70% of the town’s buildings completely destroyed. Prison abuse and torture by US soldiers in Iraq has been brought to light, but so much remains still shrouded in history’s oblivion. But while mass deception may hide this narrative from public perception, it lives and rankles in the memories and consciousness of the victims and the witnesses. As the African proverb goes, 'The Axe forgets what the Tree remembers.'

When disempowered human beings are subjected to ignominious occupation and oppression, they will seek redress in militant, often frenzied ways; they will cling on to ideologies that legitimize and glorify the revenge which they believe is the vent. The direct experience of torture and killing desensitizes sensibilities from the use of violence on others, and routinizes it.

The mistake we make is when we locate the root of the problem with violent groups in the ideology they associate themselves with. In doing so, we fail to see the roots that run deeper. Violent ideologies triumph in violent contexts.

When we condemn such groups and vow to strike back with force against them, we again miss the point that to stem violence we need to understand what fuels it- and in most cases, what fuels it is not ideology but the ignominy of defeat and oppressive occupation. Ideology helps later to corroborate, legitimize and sanctify. Hence military operations against such organizations have not yielded stable and enduring peace.

At the terrible risk of being judged as the devil’s advocate, I dare to understand  that it may at times and in part be the work of our own hands that nurtures extremist violence . As long as such wrongs continue to be done to human beings by the powerful, violent groups seeking lost pride will continue to proliferate in multifarious forms- sometimes as Khmer Rouge, sometimes as ISIS or as the undiscovered many who may just be in various stages of their genesis that contemporary global politics fosters.   

Rejoinder to the trending 'Open Letter to Moderate Muslims'

‘REFORMING’ ISLAM?

Maryam Sakeenah

Notwithstanding its stated agenda, ISIS has managed to put the conversation on Islam right at the centre of the global discourse. From celebrities to con artists to apologists and Muslim scholars, all have their two cents to share on Islam. Mr Ali A.Rizvi in his ‘Open Letter to Moderate Muslims’ published in The Huffington Post  has called for ‘reforming’ Islam. He writes that Muslim moderates inadvertently defend ISIS when they attempt to defend Islam against allegations of violence and backwardness- because ISIS follows most closely and literally the contents of Islam’s most sacred texts. Moderates are at pains to explain away ISIS’s actions as ‘unIslamic’ through interpretation and contextualization of the sources of Islam. Given the accessibility of information in this day and age, religion is no longer shrouded in sacred mystery. Once the awareness of the sources of religion explicitly sanctioning violent practices spreads, Rizvi argues, sustaining faith in the indubitability and infallibility of the Quran would be difficult.

There is a problem at the heart of Rizvi’s thesis: for starters, he presumes that faith in Islam survives and thrives because its adherents are unaware of its actual content due in part to the unfamiliarity with Arabic and inaccessibility of information about its literal content. In one fell sweep Mr Rizvi declares all faithful Muslims to be largely unaware of the violent and diabolical contents of their religion- which, if brought into the light of day, will expose the degenerate ethos of their religion and put its naive believers to abject shame.

Most Muslims as a matter of faith do in fact take their religious sources quite literally, yet do not conclude from it what ISIS does. Moderates like Reza Aslan who call for a liberal reinterpretation and metaphorical/allegorical reading of religious content are but few. And yet these billions of faithful and several hundreds of trained Islamic scholars who take the Quran and hadith quite literally hold firmly to the conviction that Islam is indeed ‘a religion of peace’. How do they arrive at this generalization in the face of the actual literal texts of Islam that seem to imply everything but that?

 The problem with both Rizvi’s thesis as well as ISIS is that both have lost sight of the ‘middleness’ that defines Islam. Muslim moderates too, when they put modernist interpretation over the letter of the Quran to explain away violent meanings the extremists may derive, lose sight of this. The essence of Islam is ‘adl’ and ‘tawazun’: (balance and middleness). The sources of Islam have contents endorsing the use of force such as in the sources Rizvi cites in his article- however, these very same sources also contain teachings that command and celebrate peacemaking, justice, kindness, upholding of rights among other things. Looking at it purely quantitatively, the latter far outweighs the former. The balance between these two sets of teaching is to be found in order to develop the true Islamic worldview which mediates between the two. This poised, comprehensive understanding does not need the prop of reinterpretation, but understands that religion defines for us the extremities- conduct in warfare through teachings of firmness and courage against the enemy in war and strife, as well as, on the other end, teachings on forbearance and kindness and mercy at all other times.

As a teacher on Islam, I often feel the need to explain to my students the apparent discrepancy between the examples of Prophet Muhammad (SAW)’s forgiveness and mercy like the one at the Conquest of Makkah in which he declared general pardon, and the instances when retributive justice and execution of penal law or punitive measures were carried out. The two instances stand for and delineate the two extremities of what our responses to wrong can range from. The former stands for Ihsan (unconditional good, more than what is justly due) and the latter for Adl (absolute justice). While the latter is a necessary element a society must be based on, the former- Allah tells us- is the superior virtue. The variation in the Prophetic example leaves it to his followers to decide when and in what circumstances each of the two is to be chosen as our response. Wisdom is to be able to make that choice correctly, depending on the nature and gravity of the situation one needs to respond to, the context and the likely consequences of our choice.

To glean this holistic, seasoned vision is what Islam calls ‘hikmah’ (wisdom). When ‘hikmah’ is absent, the resultant understanding is superficial, errant, flippant and unfair. That is precisely the mistake both ISIS and Rizvi’s ‘Open Letter’ have made.     

Another vital insight is that law and commandments exist for and are bound by core ethical principles and values. Penal laws do not operate detached from the ethical base and moral foundation. The laws of Islam have to be understood holistically as guardians of the values that are the very heart of the matter. Dissociated from the ethical content, they seem to be the brutal and barbaric edicts that ISIS and Rizvi make them out to be.

The Quran says, ‘So give good tidings to My servants; those who listen to the Word, and follow the best (meaning) in it: those are the ones whom Allah has guided, and those are the ones endued with understanding.’ (39:17-18) Innumerable Quranic verses and ahadith are very explicit- whether taken literally or figuratively- about the doing of good, delivering justice, making peace, holding firm to what is true, keeping promises, being kind and gentle etc. It is injustice to the Quran to pick out a few of its verses revealed in specific circumstances - which are to be applied in those specific circumstances within certain conditions, and take them to represent the entire ethos of the Islamic religion, eclipsing its much larger content on humane and egalitarian values. If these values were put at the core and followed as zealously as the letter of the law is feverishly applied by fanatical groups, Muslim societies today would come to epitomize the highest and worthiest in human civilization. With reference to these much more numerous and substantive contents of Islam, would following the very literal teaching of the Quran and sunnah engender anything but universal justice and goodness? Rizvi’s premise is clearly one-eyed. It does not hold ground.

Yet another problem is when Mr Rizvi calls for an Islamic Reformation on the pattern of the Jewish and Christian Reformation in the secular modern West. He is impressed with the fact that Christians and Jews can reject the violent contents of their scriptures and still retain faith and be considered part of their religious communities. There always have been serious doubts and questions about the authenticity and credibility of the contents of these scriptures even from within those religious traditions, and this takes away the concept of their infallibility. Yet there has been no such challenge of any serious proportions to the authenticity of the Quran’s content. The Quran begins hence: “This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those conscious of Allah.” (2:2)

The call to ape the secular reformation model is fundamentally problematic as it reeks strongly of eurocentrism built on the neo-imperialist belief of the inherent superiority of the Western model. Karen Armstrong has taken issue with those in the developed West who criticize ISIS while failing to understand the dynamics and lessons of history that have led to the rise of groups like ISIS. She writes, ‘Many secular thinkers now regard “religion” as inherently belligerent and intolerant, and an irrational, backward and violent “other” to the peaceable and humane liberal state – an attitude with an unfortunate echo of the colonialist view of indigenous peoples as hopelessly “primitive”, mired in their benighted religious beliefs. There are consequences to our failure to understand that our secularism, and its understanding of the role of religion, is exceptional... when we look with horror upon the travesty of Isis, we would be wise to acknowledge that its barbaric violence may be, at least in part, the offspring of policies guided by our disdain.’

The broken lens Mr Ali A.Rizvi views the world from is a tainted one. This takes away from him credibility as a well-meaning reformist offering prescriptions and fixes for the ailing Muslim world. The prescription for reforming Muslim society lies within Islam’s own ethos. 

THE CRISIS OF AUTHORITY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD

THE SHARIAH’S LOST SOUL

Maryam Sakeenah

‘Shariah’ (Islamic law) has become one of the most spine chilling, sensational words in contemporary lexicon. In the United Kingdom with its sizeable Muslim population, fear of the Shariah is palpable as we hear of alarmist articles about ‘creeping shariah’ all over the UK, concern over the proliferation of halal meat or veils. Often the fear is irrational, used by xenophobes, racists and supremacists who resent multiculturalism and are uncomfortable with diversity.

But it is not just the Islamophobes and sensationalist media con artists who make the Shariah seem grotesque and terrifying. The spurious ‘caliphate’ of sorts run by the ISIS in Iraq and its bloodcurdling atrocities in the name of Shariah. Nigeria’s Boko Haram has followed suit with its brutal misogynistic practices. Groups like this which deface and defile the Shariah’s sanctity continue to proliferate all over the crisis-ridden Muslim world. 

And yet, crazy as this sounds, the demand for Shariah is not just understandable and legitimate but also an aspiration shared by an overwhelming majority of Muslims worldwide. The PEW Research Centre’s 2013 survey finds that most Muslims are deeply committed to their faith and want its teachings to shape not only their personal lives but also their societies and politics. Many express a desire for shariah to be recognized as the official law of their country. Solid majorities in most of the countries favour the establishment of shariah, including 99% of Muslims in Afghanistan, 71% of Muslims in Nigeria, 72% in Indonesia, 74% in Egypt, 84% in Pakistan and 89% in the Palestinian territories.

To make sense of this, one needs to understand that the Prophet (SAW) was a successful head of state and lawgiver, and that in statehood did Islam find culmination as an established system and way of life. The Islamic State flourished and ruled over continents for centuries. In fact, for most of Islam’s history before the colonization of Muslim lands, Islamic law was established as the law of the land. This has left an indelible impact on Muslim collective imagination, imbuing it with nostalgia in the narrative of a bygone glory. 

The introduction of ‘Anglo Muhammadan Law’ in British-ruled South Asia and the displacement of traditional Muslim fiqhi madhabs (juristic schools) in favour of colonial legal systems in other parts of the Muslim world has intensified this nostalgia. The decadence in post colonial Muslim societies is seen now as the result of the absence of Shariah law. Given the fact that many areas across the Muslim world writhe under oppression, tyranny and the systematic suppression of religious aspirations by corrupt secular regimes, this nostalgic longing has at times fuelled militancy and violence by rebel groups. The demand for Shariah is used by these militant and violent Islamist movements vying for political control and power. Secular political ambitions are sanctified with the holy battlecry for the restoration of Shariah law.

‘Whose Shariah?’, however, is a contentious, tricky question we do not have many answers to- but it is the very heart of the matter. The implications of this are seriously damaging to the wider interests of Islam.

Invoking religion and using religious rhetoric gives a religious colour to the violent, attention-seeking tactics used by these groups. Hence Islam is perceived as either intrinsically violent or with a dangerous potency to fuel religious violence. Simplified, reductionist stereotypes of Islam and Muslims are strengthened. This makes harder the task of peacemakers, healers and arbiters engaged in toning down the precarious polarization between Islam and ‘the West.’

The media shows such violence and militancy as essentially religious, not seeing it for its secular-materialist socio political underpinnings or the raw drive for winning power to redress perceived disempowerment by fringe groups.

Speaking of Boko Haram and ISIS, it has been heartening to see Muslim opinion leaders and scholars speak out against their methods, emphatically dissociating these from mainstream Islam. However, highly needful as it was, what was found wanting was a more specific refutation of the textual basis from where such actions of such groups seek justification.

In fact, there is a vital and basic understanding almost missing from Muslim collective consciousness- that many minutiae of Islamic law are rooted in cultural context. They were neither revealed laws nor stipulated as universal, absolute unalterable laws by divine will. The Quran and sunnah directly address and legislate for a few matters, and these texts are but few compared to the entire volume of Islamic juristic literature which was compiled and developed over the historical evolution of Islamic civilization.

The fairly modest content of Islamic laws in the Quran and sunnah means that for deriving the rest of the laws recourse has to be made to jurisprudence through scholarly consensus over the ages. More importantly, it means that such lawmaking has to be guided and inspired by the essence and ethical guideline of the principles of the Quran and sunnah.

That egalitarianism, establishment of justice, protection of rights and an interest in ending human misery to make possible higher ethical and spiritual functions of human existence is a core objective of Islam cannot be doubted. Islam had to deal with a society in which slavery- predating Islam- was a basic social institution. Islam regulated it by law, defining parameters and setting ethical guidelines. Wars involved sexual abuse victimizing women of the enemy side. Here too Islam set down rights and responsibilities to prevent such abuse. It is this humane dimension and ethical orientation Islam gave which shines through and endures over these temporal pre Islamic cultural traditions and practices. In this day and age when human progress has achieved the legal abolition of slavery and its associated practices, it is utterly ludicrous to invoke these ancient traditions as part of Islam. The rights of people recognized and protected in this day and age are sacred to Islam which teaches supremacy of law and human progress through constant social reform. Violating these established principles on which a silent global consensus exists, is sinful. It is important here to remind ourselves of the fact that the Prophet (SAW) wistfully remembered the signing of a pre Islamic document of rights (Half ul Fazul) and expressed his full endorsement of it as a prophet of Islam.

The failure of contemporary Muslim jurisprudence has been the inability to put the spirit at the core of the letter of the law and to make Muslims understand that the law exists to protect the essential values; that it is the protection of those values that are the heart of the matter, while laws are often bound by culture and historicity. This explains the unseeing literalism and fanaticism for restoring the letter of the Shariah in corrupt and decadent Muslim societies and the preoccupation with juristic nitpicking in the Muslim world.

It is the crisis of authority in the Muslim world due to which random groups pining for the return of Muslim glory make bold claims as to what constitutes Shariah law and give their own misconstrued versions tracing them back to sacred texts or early Muslim culture. Those who got together to condemn ISIS and Boko Haram’s actions as unIslamic must also with a single voice present a blueprint of Islamic law that is relevant, practical and applicable today, in tune with contemporary cultural and socio political context. It is a long haul, but unless such a juristic magnum opus is initiated, twisted, grotesque and soulless versions of ‘Shariah’ will keep haunting us like a spectre. Authority as to who interprets religious law and how has to be won back.

Abdal Hakim Murad (Tim Winter) writes of the plight of the Nigerian schoolgirls:

“... the whole atrocity underscores the crisis of leadership which is now a grave problem for global Islam. The Boko Haram abductions have been condemned by all the traditional authorities: Nigeria’s chief sultan, the grand muftis of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the leading Islamic universities, the main Islamic bodies here in Britain. It’s been a moment of unity. Unfortunately, we can’t pretend that it has helped. For the last decade or so, across the Muslim world small but ferocious factions have defied the traditional leaders and taken religion into their own hands. In every case the result has been a disaster for communities and even whole countries. The use by these factions of religious rhetoric to validate what is often a political or economic grievance has left many religious leaders at a loss. In some cases the imams have been assassinated for speaking out against the extremists; this has happened in Nigeria, as elsewhere. So what should they do?
The founder of Islam had no time for extreme zealotry. ‘May the fanatics perish,’ he once commented. If he detected extreme or hateful behaviour in anyone he would condemn it immediately. Present-day leaders recall this, as they struggle to find ways of fighting terrorism.
So this scandal cuts more deeply. How to restore the authority of the mainline leadership, among embittered young men who trust no-one? Spies and bullets will not, in the long term, defeat these aberrations: the religious leadership must find some way of regaining its moral authority in an age of rapid change and rampant injustice.”

If the ethical spirit of Muslim law is not reinstated, if the textual bases for inhuman, brutal and violent practices not refuted, routine condemnations from Islam’s defenders will serve no more than as rhetorical generalisations.