[Reader-list] Rethinking Islam

[we wi]

Hi ,
   
  I understood the problem with you is being citizens of India, either Hindu or Non-Hindu, You 
  all studied in wrong schools.  You would like to live Indian style, either in or out of INDIA but you just hate HINDUISM.   You can insult anything,anybody and You commit all mistakes or support them knowingly or unknowingly, but no body should say anything.  Damn you.  What a .............
   
  Regards,
  Dhatri.
   
   
  
"S. Jabbar" <sonia.jabbar at gmail.com> wrote:
  KS,

I asked some perfectly serious questions and received an appropriate
response from Shuddha, to which I replied; and thus began, what I
considered, a very interesting discussion. I have not been able to find
answers to my questions in the books I've been reading and so I put them up
to the Sarai list hoping someone would enlighten me. Shuddha responded and
I had hoped that others might join in, at least to point me to some books.
I am grateful to Radhikrajen for suggesting a library in Bangalore.

How tiresome, then, to read your childish post. You are on a flight between
Babylon and Ankara (how fascinating, thanks for letting us know as this has
everything to do with the subject under discussion) and so you don't have
the time or the wherewithal to send me references, but have energy enough to
throw e-spitballs at Shuddha. How bizarre. Does one charitably assume its
the airline food that's making you dyspeptic or are you congenitally prone
to making strange connections where none exist?

What does ijtehad— reasoned debate within Islam— have anything at all to do
with yogis? And I asked for 'Islamic scholars' as opposed to 'Muslim
scholars'. Some of the finest scholars on Islam are non-Muslim: Arberry,
Arnold, Schimmel, Armstrong, Massignon and Hodgson to name a few.
Unfortunate that you think Shuddha, and by extension anyone else, must
necessarily become 'Maulvi Shuddh' to engage in the study and discussion of
Islam.


If you had a problem with the content of Shuddha's response to me then it
would have been useful for all concerned if you'd posted your criticism
(even if barbed and loaded with insults), otherwise you only come across as
downright silly.

Ijtehad in Islam? I think we need it desperately within the Sarai List
first.

sonia




On 4/27/08 8:50 PM, "kirdar singh" wrote:

> Very interesting... S.Jabbar asked "if there are Islamic scholars who
> can guide me..." and quickly jumped in Maulvi Shuddhabrata Sengupta to
> guide her. I can very well see Maulvi Shuddh in the sorely needed role
> of a mujtahid in Islam in the times to come... Hail Mutazilites, Hail
> Farabites, move away you Yogis... Here comes the New Age Islamic
> Ijtehad, Sarai being the new Baghdad...
> 
> (Sorry I'll give you the references later, since I am in a flight
> between Babylon and Ankara.)
> 
> KS
> 
> (sorry, just couldn't help break the serious silence on this issue
> from the other Sarai fellows who are as usual spellbound).
> 
> 
> On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 4:53 PM, Shuddhabrata Sengupta
> wrote:
>> Dear Sonia,
>> 
>> Thanks for your post. I have been studying Ibn Arabi, Ibn Rushd and
>> the Mutazila for quite some time now. And have always been struck by
>> the lucidity and the passion with which free thought, reason and a
>> robust universalist humanism finds its expression in Islam (at that
>> time, and in these hands). The only other comparable thread (to my
>> knowledge) is the core of the Madhyamika tradition centreing on
>> Nagarjuna in Mahayana Buddhism. And I take my comforts from somewhere
>> between Mutazila and Madhyamika (which resonates nicely when you
>> speak them as names), Incidentally, someone like Ram Mohan Roy's life
>> time's work of rethinking the corpus of Hinduism occurred as a result
>> of a very early exposure to Mutazila reason while in Patna (and his
>> earliers works which are in Persian, are actually commentaries on the
>> Mutazila tradition). However, the Mutazila, in their time, from what
>> I understand, also became a little rigid and intolerant (during their
>> brief ascendancy in Damascus).
>> 
>> But the crucial thing that happenned is as you rightly point out, to
>> do with the politics of the caliphates, different schools got aligned
>> with different aspirants to the different caliphatic expressions, and
>> got involved in secterian political conflict that had very little to
>> do with their original philosophical orientations. I still hold a
>> candle for the somewhat ruthless independence maintained by the
>> Ismaili Nizaris on Alamut, who steered clear of the politics of the
>> Caliphate. Perhaps the last and crucial factor that broke the back of
>> free thought was the sudden onslaught of the Mongols on the last
>> citadel of the Abbasids in Baghdad. Incidentally, the Mongols (at
>> least in a token manner, were flirting with Mahayana Buddhism at that
>> time, so that remains another enigma) on the one hand, and the
>> collapse of Moorish Spain on the west. These two developments, which
>> exhausted and scattered the Islamicate intelligentsia, led to the
>> 'closure of the gates of 'Itjehad' (interpretation) and the rise of
>> dogma and clerics, which Islam (which never had a centralized clergy
>> to speak of before) has not recovered from, not yet.
>> 
>> What it does make me think about is the fragility of thought as a
>> result of its contact with power. The most interesting trends in the
>> Islamic world, had they stuck out and remained autonomous (and those
>> that did, within heterodox, not orthodox Sufism, survived) could have
>> still flourished. Instead, they allied themselves to this or that
>> claimant to the Caliphate, (not unlike many of today's
>> intelligentsia) and when that centre of power was torn down, there
>> was little cover for them. They became vulnerable because they had
>> sought refuge in the powerful. The glorious and tragic history of
>> freedom and solidarity in the Muslim world is a kind of object lesson
>> for all of us today. We could all become like the Mutazila.
>> Remembered, because we are forgotten.
>> 
>> However, I do think interesting things are happenning now, and the
>> current turbulence in the Intellectual currents of the Muslim world,
>> which people like Ziauddin Sardar (whom you mention), Tariq Ramadan,
>> Fatima Mernissi and several others represent, points to a kind of re-
>> opening of the gates of Itjehad. I think that is as exciting a
>> development (though it doesnt get the press it deserves) as the
>> renewal of serious and rigorous debate within philosophical Buddhism
>> in the twentieth century.
>> 
>> I dont have my books around me at the moment as I am not in Delhi, so
>> I would hesitate to give you precise references, but I would be happy
>> to carry this conversation forward in the future (either on or off
>> the list)
>> 
>> regards
>> 
>> Shuddha
>> 
>> 
>> On 26-Apr-08, at 2:41 PM, S. Jabbar wrote:
>> 
>>> I¹ve been reading some of the works of philosophers like Al Farabi,
>>> Ibn
>>> Arabi and Ibn Rushd and the Mutazila movement of the 8th c. and
>>> have been
>>> amazed by two things: 1. The focus on reason in Islam and 2. Universal
>>> brotherhood.
>>> 
>>> I wonder if there are Islamic scholars who can guide me through
>>> centuries of
>>> debate. I¹d like to know when and why reason was trashed in favour of
>>> faith‹ I know something of the debates of the Asharites but how did
>>> their
>>> views come to eclipse the Muslim philosophers who took their cue
>>> from the
>>> Greek philosophers. And then why did the idea of an Islamic
>>> brotherhood
>>> eclipse the idea of universal brotherhood? I imagine it had to do
>>> with the
>>> politics of the Caliphates, but can someone direct me to some
>>> resources
>>> please.
>>> 
>>> Pasted below is an old but interesting essay by Ziauddin Sardar. I
>>> found
>>> his book Desperately seeking Paradise quite wonderful.
>>> 
>>> Thanks & regards
>>> Sj
>>> ------------------------
>>> 
>>> Rethinking Islam
>>> By Professor Ziauddin Sardar
>>> 
>>> Serious rethinking within Islam is long overdue. Muslims have been
>>> comfortably relying, or rather falling back, on age-old
>>> interpretations for
>>> much too long.
>>> 
>>> This is why we feel so painful in the contemporary world, so
>>> uncomfortable
>>> with modernity. Scholars and thinkers have been suggesting for well
>>> over a
>>> century that we need to make a serious attempt at Ijtihad, at reasoned
>>> struggle and rethinking, to reform Islam. At the beginning of the last
>>> century, Jamaluddin Afghani and Mohammad Abduh led the call for a new
>>> Ijtihad; and along the way many notable intellectuals, academics
>>> and sages
>>> have added to this plea - not least Mohammad Iqbal, Malik bin Nabbi
>>> and
>>> Abdul Qadir Audah. Yet, ijtihad is one thing Muslim societies have
>>> singularly failed to undertake. Why?
>>> 
>>> The why has now acquired an added urgency. Just look around the
>>> Muslim world
>>> and see how far we have travelled away from the ideals and spirit
>>> of Islam.
>>> Far from being a liberating force, a kinetic social, cultural and
>>> intellectual dynamics for equality, justice and humane values,
>>> Islam seems
>>> to have acquired a pathological strain. Indeed, it seems to me that
>>> we have
>>> internalised all those historic and contemporary western
>>> representations of
>>> Islam and Muslims that have been demonising us for centuries. We now
>>> actually wear the garb, I have to confess, of the very demons that
>>> the West
>>> has been projecting on our collective personality.
>>> 
>>> But to blame the West, or a notion of instrumental modernity that
>>> is all but
>>> alien to us, would be a lazy option. True, the West, and particularly
>>> America, has a great deal to answer for. And Muslims are quick to
>>> point a
>>> finger at the injustices committed by American and European foreign
>>> policies
>>> and hegemonic tendencies. However, that is only a part, and in my
>>> opinion
>>> not an insurmountable part, of the malaise. Hegemony is not always
>>> imposed;
>>> sometimes, it is invited. The internal situation within Islam is an
>>> open
>>> invitation.
>>> 
>>> We have failed to respond to the summons to Ijtihad for some very
>>> profound
>>> reasons. Prime amongst these is the fact that the context of our
>>> sacred
>>> texts the Qur¹an and the examples of the Prophet Muhammad, our
>>> absolute
>>> frame of reference has been frozen in history. One can only have an
>>> interpretative relationship with a text even more so if the text is
>>> perceived to be eternal. But if the interpretative context of the
>>> text is
>>> never our context, not our own time, then its interpretation can
>>> hardly have
>>> any real meaning or significance for us as we are now. Historic
>>> interpretations constantly drag us back to history, to frozen and
>>> ossified
>>> context of long ago; worse, to perceived and romanticised contexts
>>> that have
>>> not even existed in history. This is why while Muslims have a strong
>>> emotional attachment to Islam, Islam per se, as a worldview and
>>> system of
>>> ethics, has little or no direct relevance to their daily lives
>>> apart from
>>> the obvious concerns of rituals and worship. Ijtihad and fresh
>>> thinking have
>>> not been possible because there is no context within which they can
>>> actually
>>> take place.
>>> 
>>> The freezing of interpretation, the closure of Œthe gates of
>>> ijtihad¹, has
>>> had a devastating effect on Muslim thought and action. In
>>> particular, it has
>>> produced what I can only describe as three metaphysical
>>> catastrophes: the
>>> elevation of the Shari`ah to the level of the Divine, with the
>>> consequent
>>> removal of agency from the believers, and the equation of Islam
>>> with the
>>> State. Let me elaborate.
>>> 
>>> Most Muslims consider the Shari`ah, commonly translated as ŒIslamic
>>> law¹, to
>>> be divine. Yet, there is nothing divine about the Shari`ah. The
>>> only thing
>>> that can legitimately be described as divine in Islam is the
>>> Qur¹an. The
>>> Shari`ah is a human construction; an attempt to understand the
>>> divine will
>>> in a particular context. This is why the bulk of the Shari`ah actually
>>> consists of fiqh or jurisprudence, which is nothing more than legal
>>> opinion
>>> of classical jurists. The very term fiqh was not in vogue before
>>> the Abbasid
>>> period when it was actually formulated and codified. But when fiqh
>>> assumed
>>> its systematic legal form, it incorporated three vital aspects of
>>> Muslim
>>> society of the Abbasid period. At that juncture, Muslim history was
>>> in its
>>> expansionist phase, and fiqh incorporated the logic of Muslim
>>> imperialism of
>>> that time. The fiqh rulings on apostasy, for example, derive not
>>> from the
>>> Qur'an but from this logic. Moreover, the world was simple and
>>> could easily
>>> be divided into black and white: hence, the division of the world
>>> into Daral
>>> Islam and Daral Harb. Furthermore, as the framers of law were not
>>> by this
>>> stage managers of society, the law became merely theory which could
>>> not be
>>> modified - the framers of the law were unable to see where the
>>> faults lay
>>> and what aspect of the law needed fresh thinking and reformulation.
>>> Thus
>>> fiqh, as we know it today, evolved on the basis of a division
>>> between those
>>> who were governing and set themselves apart from society and those
>>> who were
>>> framing the law; the epistemological assumptions of a Œgolden¹
>>> phase of
>>> Muslim history also came into play. When we describe the Shari`ah
>>> as divine,
>>> we actually provide divine sanctions for the rulings of by-gone fiqh.
>>> 
>>> What this means in reality is that when Muslim countries apply or
>>> impose the
>>> Shari`ah the demands of Muslims from Indonesia to Nigeria - the
>>> contradictions that were inherent in the formulation and evolution
>>> of fiqh
>>> come to the fore. That is why wherever the Shari`ah is imposed
>>> that is,
>>> fiqhi legislation is applied, out of context from the time when it was
>>> formulated and out of step with ours - Muslim societies acquire a
>>> medieval
>>> feel. We can see that in Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and the Taliban of
>>> Afghanistan. When narrow adherence to fiqh, to the dictates of this
>>> or that
>>> school of thought, whether it has any relevance to real world or not,
>>> becomes the norm, ossification sets in. The Shari`ah will solve all
>>> our
>>> problems becomes the common sentiment; and it becomes necessary for
>>> a group
>>> with vested interest in this notion of the Shari`ah to preserve its
>>> territory, the source of its power and prestige, at all costs. An
>>> outmoded
>>> body of law is thus equated with the Shari`ah, and criticism is
>>> shunned and
>>> outlawed by appealing to its divine nature.
>>> 
>>> The elevation of the Shari`ah to the divine level also means the
>>> believers
>>> themselves have no agency: since The Law is a priori given people
>>> themselves
>>> have nothing to do expect to follow it. Believers thus become passive
>>> receivers rather than active seekers of truth. In reality, the
>>> Shari`ah is
>>> nothing more than a set of principles, a framework of values, that
>>> provide
>>> Muslim societies with guidance. But these sets of principles and
>>> values are
>>> not a static given but are dynamically derived within changing
>>> contexts. As
>>> such, the Shari`ah is a problem-solving methodology rather than
>>> law. It
>>> requires the believers to exert themselves and constantly
>>> reinterpret the
>>> Qur¹an and look at the life of the Prophet Muhammad with ever
>>> changing fresh
>>> eyes. Indeed, the Qur¹an has to be reinterpreted from epoch to
>>> epoch which
>>> means the Shari`ah, and by extension Islam itself, has to be
>>> reformulated
>>> with changing contexts. The only thing that remains constant in
>>> Islam is the
>>> text of the Qur¹an itself its concepts providing the anchor for ever
>>> changing interpretations.
>>> 
>>> Islam is not so much a religion but an integrative worldview: that
>>> is to
>>> say, it integrates all aspects of reality by providing a moral
>>> perspective
>>> on every aspect of human endeavour. Islam does not provide ready-made
>>> answers to all human problems; it provides a moral and just
>>> perspective
>>> within which Muslims must endeavour to find answers to all human
>>> problems.
>>> But if everything is a priori given, in the shape of a divine
>>> Shari`ah, then
>>> Islam is reduced to a totalistic ideology. Indeed, this is exactly
>>> what the
>>> Islamic movements in particularly Jamaat-e-Islami (both Pakistani and
>>> Indian varieties) and the Muslim Brotherhood have reduced Islam
>>> to. Which
>>> brings me to the third metaphysical catastrophe. Place this
>>> ideology within
>>> a nation state, with divinely attributed Shari`ah at its centre,
>>> and you
>>> have an ŒIslamic state¹. All contemporary ŒIslamic states¹, from
>>> Iran, Saudi
>>> Arabia, the Sudan to aspiring Pakistan, are based on this ridiculous
>>> assumption. But once Islam, as an ideology, becomes a programme of
>>> action of
>>> a vested group, it looses its humanity and becomes a battlefield where
>>> morality, reason and justice are readily sacrificed at the alter of
>>> emotions. Moreover, the step from a totalistic ideology to a
>>> totalitarian
>>> order where every human-situation is open to state-arbitration is a
>>> small
>>> one. The transformation of Islam into a state-based political
>>> ideology not
>>> only deprives it of its all moral and ethical content, it also
>>> debunks most
>>> of Muslim history as un-Islamic. Invariably, when Islamists
>>> rediscover a
>>> Œgolden¹ past, they do so only in order to disdain the present and
>>> mock the
>>> future. All we are left with is messianic chaos, as we saw so
>>> vividly in the
>>> Taliban regime, where all politics as the domain of action is
>>> paralysed and
>>> meaningless pieties become the foundational truth of the state.
>>> 
>>> The totalitarian vision of Islam as a State thus transforms Muslim
>>> politics
>>> into a metaphysics: in such an enterprise, every action can be
>>> justified as
>>> ŒIslamic¹ by the dictates of political expediency as we witnessed in
>>> revolutionary Iran.
>>> 
>>> The three metaphysical catastrophes are accentuated by an overall
>>> process of
>>> reduction that has become the norm in Muslim societies. The reductive
>>> process itself is also not new; but now it has reached such an
>>> absurd state
>>> that the very ideas that are supposed to take Muslims societies
>>> towards
>>> humane values now actually take them in the opposite direction.
>>> From the
>>> subtle beauty of a perennial challenge to construct justice through
>>> mercy
>>> and compassion, we get mechanistic formulae fixated with the extremes
>>> repeated by people convinced they have no duty to think for themselves
>>> because all questions have been answered for them by the classical
>>> `ulamas,
>>> far better men long dead. And because everything carries the brand
>>> name of
>>> Islam, to question it, or argue against it, is tantamount to voting
>>> for sin.
>>> 
>>> The process of reduction started with the very notion of `alim
>>> (scholar)
>>> itself. Just who is an `alim; what makes him an authority? In early
>>> Islam,
>>> an `alim was anyone who acquired `ilm, or knowledge, which was itself
>>> described in a broad sense. We can see that in the early
>>> classifications of
>>> knowledge by such scholars as al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, al-
>>> Ghazali and
>>> Ibn Khuldun. Indeed, both the definition of knowledge and its
>>> classification
>>> was a major intellectual activity in classical Islam. So all
>>> learned men,
>>> scientists as well as philosophers, scholars as well as theologians,
>>> constituted the `ulama. But after the Œgates of ijtihad¹ were
>>> closed during
>>> the Abbasid era, ilm was increasingly reduced to religious
>>> knowledge and the
>>> `ulama came to constitute only religious scholars.
>>> 
>>> Similarly, the idea of ijma, the central notion of communal life in
>>> Islam,
>>> has been reduced to the consensus of a select few. Ijma literally
>>> means
>>> consensus of the people. The concept dates back to the practice of
>>> Prophet
>>> Muhammad himself as leader of the original polity of Muslims. When the
>>> Prophet Muhammad wanted to reach a decision, he would call the
>>> whole Muslim
>>> community then, admittedly not very large to the mosque. A
>>> discussion
>>> would ensue; arguments for and against would be presented. Finally,

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