Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (10 page)

even their callous disregard for the value of human life, especially the lives of women. The point is that this event symbolizes a truly troubling level of moral degeneration in the collective life of contemporary Islam. This incident follows in the wake of a series of events, all of which are symptomatic of something gone awfully wrong in our Muslim system of belief. These events have ranged from the highly visible and infamous such as the 9/11 suicide mass slaughter of mostly non-Muslims, to less visible and lesser-known incidents. For instance, a lesser- known, but equally horrific, incident involved the beheading of a Syrian citizen, ‘Abd al-Karim al-Naqshabandi, on December 13, 1996, for allegedly practicing witchcraft against his Saudi employer, Prince Salman bin Sa‘ud bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, a nephew of King Fahd. The primary evidence warranting the execution of al-Naqshabandi was an amulet, with Qur’anic verses inscribed on it, found in his desk drawer at work. According to al-Naqshabandi, the amulet was given to him by his mother in Syria, in the belief that it would ward off envy and evil spirits. The Saudi government, however, considered the possession of the amulet and some books on Sufism allegedly found in the defendant’s home to be grievous acts of heresy (
a‘mal bid‘iyya wa shirkiyya
) that warranted nothing less than death.
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The consistent commission of repulsive acts of injustice by people who believe that they are acting in the name of Islam must give all Muslims serious pause. From the perspective of a believing Muslim, I must worry about God’s covenant with the Muslim people, especially that the Qur’an is full of warnings to Muslims that if they fail to establish justice and bear witness to the truth, God owes us, Muslims, nothing, and is bound to replace us with another people who are more capable of honoring God through establishing justice on this earth.
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The covenant identified in the Qur’an and given to Muslims is not an entitlement. The Qur’an consistently emphasizes that the covenant given to Muslims is contingent, and that the failure to do it justice will lead God to abandon those once entrusted with the Divine covenant to their own vices and the consequences of their evil deeds.
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Looking at the sheer amount of ugliness perpetuated in the past twenty years in Islam’s name, only the most deluded or self-absorbed Muslim would remain unconcerned. In this context, it is important to note that tragic incidents, such as the murder of al-Naqshabandi, or the 9/11 terrorist attacks, cannot safely always be attributed to an aberrational fanaticism that can be considered marginal and unrepresentative. From a sociological perspective, the commission of violently repulsive acts is often the byproduct of ongoing social malignancies that fester for a long time before manifesting in publicly visible acts. It is risky, and quite foolish, to wave away socially and politically pathological behavior as marginal corruptions in society. Put rather bluntly, people do not just wake up one day and decide to commit an act of terrorism, or decide to kill a person for practicing witchcraft; rather, such acts are preceded by social dynamics that desensitize and deconstruct society’s sense of moral virtue and ethics. Especially, as far as theological constructs are

concerned, the commission of and social responses to acts of cruelty typically undergo a long process of indoctrination and acculturation that both facilitate the commission of such acts and mute or mitigate the sense of social outrage upon the commission of offensive behavior. Much of this process of indoctrination and acculturation can be gleaned from the relatively apathetic and muted Muslim responses to the commission of socially and politically abusive acts. Furthermore, a probing and conscientious Muslim ought to be concerned at the evidence of the emergence of a consistent pattern and practice of such abusive conduct. When one finds that Islam is repeatedly and consistently being exploited to justify immoral behavior, this must be considered as a pattern of practice that ought to give Muslims cause for serious concern. This is all the more so because, in many ways, it is history that sets the future in motion. Each abusive act committed in the name of Islam becomes a historical precedent, and each precedent could carry normative weight, and therefore influence the meaning of Islam in the future. Even when one is considering Divinely revealed values, such values acquire meaning only within evolving and shifting contexts. Functioning within different and particularized contexts, interpretive communities coalesce around revealed injunctions and values, and then endow them with meaning. Put differently, there is a socio-historical enterprise formed of various participants that partake in the generation of meaning. The participants in these various socio-historical enterprises are known as interpretive communities – groups of people who share common hermeneutical methodologies, linguistic skills, and epistemological values and coalesce around a particular set of texts and determine the meaning and import of these texts. The determinations of the participants in a socio-historical enterprise become precedents that help set the meaning, and practical applications, of a text, even if the text is sacred, such as the Qur’an. Therefore, when we speak about the meaning of Islam today, we are really talking about the product of cumulative enterprises that have generated communities of interpretation through a long span of history.
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In my view, it is imperative for Muslim intellectuals to engage the various precedents set in the name of Islam, and to negotiate the meaning of their religion. Shirking away from this responsibility, or dealing with it in an irresponsible apologetic fashion, would be tantamount to the abandonment of Islam, and a violation of the solemn obligation to promote what is good in life, and reject what is wrong. As Muslims, we are well aware of the Islamic obligation placed upon every Muslim man and woman to enjoin the good and forbid the evil (
al-amr bi’l ma‘ruf wa al-nahy ‘ann al-munkar
).
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In fact, according to the Qur’an, the merit of the Muslim nation is hinged on its discharging of this obligation of bearing witness, on God’s behalf, to goodness and justice.
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Naturally, testifying to the injustice committed by non-Muslims against Muslims is infinitely easier than testifying to the injustice committed by Muslims, whether it be against fellow Muslims or non-Muslims. This is why the Qur’an explicitly

commands Muslims to bear witness for truth and justice, even if the testimony is against themselves or against loved ones. Furthermore, the Qur’an specifically identifies such truthful testimony against self-interest as testimony rendered on God’s behalf.
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In my view, truthful testimony is rendered on God’s behalf because silence in the face of a wrong committed in the name of Islam is a form of suborning the corruption of the religion. Considered from this perspective, the worst injustice, and the one most worthy of Muslim outrage, is that committed by Muslims, in Islam’s name, because that is more deprecating to God and God’s religion than any supposed heresy or legal infraction. It is out of concern for the sanctity of their own religion that one would imagine that Muslims would be the most boisterous and vigilant in protesting injustices committed in Islam’s name, whether against Muslims or non-Muslims. But in the atmosphere of rampant apologetics and defensiveness that plagues Muslim cultures, one finds that it is exactly this type of thinking that is conspicuously absent from current Muslim activism and intellectual discourses.

When it comes to the issue of self-critical appraisals, Muslim discourses, for the most part, remain captive to the post-colonial experience. These discourses are politicized and polarized to the extent that a Muslim intellectual who takes a critical approach to the Islamic tradition often feels that he is stepping into a minefield. It is difficult for a contemporary Muslim scholar to take a critical position on such matters as Islam and violence or Islam and women without becoming the subject of suspicion, and even accusations as to his or her loyalties and commitments. In addition, it has become a rather powerful rhetorical device to contend that the West is perpetuating false universalisms, and to accuse Muslim critics of being deluded into accepting these universalisms as a God- given truth. These Muslim critics, it is claimed, then project the West’s truth onto the Islamic tradition, as if what the West sees as true and good must necessarily be so, and therefore must be adopted by all Muslims.
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Most often, this type of accusation is leveled against Muslim critics with feminist agendas, but also it has been utilized rather widely against Muslim intellectuals calling for self-critical re-evaluations post-9/11. It is a powerful rhetorical device because the user of such a device is positioning himself or herself as the guardian of integrity and authenticity, while positioning his or her opponents as gullible and even simple-minded.
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In addition, as an extension of the relativism argument, it is often argued that it is immaterial whether the West, or anyone else in the world, is offended or shocked by the legal and social practices of Muslims. Islam, it is argued, has its own set of standards for justice and righteousness, and it is of no consequence if those standards happen to be inconsistent with the moral sensitivities of non-Muslims. This argument was repeated often in the context of justifying and defending the Salman Rushdie affair, the destruction of the Buddha statues in Afghanistan, and the treatment of women by the Taliban. On face value, this argument is attractive because it seems to affirm a sense of Islamic autonomy and authentic uniqueness that is arguably consistent with the

notion that God is sovereign and that the Divine law is not in any way contingent upon the whim of human beings.
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The issue of, what is now commonly described as, cultural relativism versus universalism is very complex, and this is not the place to delve into it. I will note only that this whole discourse becomes rather incoherent unless one clearly identifies what specific value is being identified as relative or universal. Unless one is explicit and specific about the particular value that is claimed to be unique, this whole discourse stops making any sense. In addition, Islam itself, like all religions, is founded on certain universals such as mercy, justice, compassion, and dignity.
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The Qur’an itself consistently uses terminology that presupposes the existence of universal values, and presumes such values to be recognizable by human beings universally. Much of the Qur’anic discourse on values such as justice, mercy, truth, kindness, and generosity would make little sense if one rejected the existence of universal values.
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Furthermore, claims of ontological truth, whether based on reason or revelation, are not anathema to Islam.
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From an Islamic perspective, Muslims are not forbidden, and in my opinion are even encouraged, to search for moral universals that could serve as shared and common goals with humanity at large.
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This seems to me to be an essential characteristic of a universal religion that is addressed to humanity at large, and not to an exclusive cultural or social group. The Qur’an insists that it is the bearer of a message to all humankind, and not to a particular tribe or race.
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If this is so, Muslims cannot afford to claim that they are not concerned with how the rest of the world sees and evaluates their actions. A universal religion must be accessible and accountable to others so that it can remain pertinent to humanity at large. A universal religion that is neither accessible nor accountable to humanity at large becomes like a private and closed club with bylaws and practices that make sense only to its members.

It seems to me that commentators who respond to shocking incidents such as those mentioned above, by engaging in a knee-jerk reaction of protesting false Western universals, and rejecting introspective self-critical approaches, play well into the hands of a siege mentality that seems to pervade much of contemporary Muslim thought. If critical approaches to the tradition will be consistently dismissed as Western influenced, or as a form of Westoxification,
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it is difficult to imagine how Muslims will be able to emerge out of what might be described as a state of intellectual dissonance, and into a more constructive engagement with modernity. By “intellectual dissonance,” I mean a state of social and cultural schizophrenia in which Muslims experience simultaneously the challenge of modernity, a severe alienation, and evasiveness towards the Islamic intellectual experience, and, at the same time, a symbolic identification and an idealization of that experience.
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While we suffer this state of intellectual dissonance, there is the very real risk that in our defensive effort to expunge the moral universals of the West, Muslims will also end up dismissing the moral universals of Islam itself. For instance, when contemporary Muslim scholars rise

to emphasize the numerous moral and humanistic aspects of the Islamic tradition, and they are accused by their fellow Muslims of seeking to appease the West, the real danger is that in this highly polarized and politicized climate much of what is authentically Islamic and genuinely beautiful will be lost or forgotten for a long period to come. This, in turn, points to a basic and very serious fallacy, and that is the tendency, usually exhibited by religious fundamentalists and ideological purists, to presume that moral values have a pure lineage that can be precisely identified as Western or non-Western. Whether Muslims or not, purists tend to classify particular values as squarely Judeo- Christian while others are Islamic. It is as if values have a genealogy that can be clearly and precisely ascertained, which then can be utilized in classifying what properly belongs to the West and what belongs to Islam. But the origin and lineage of values are as much of a socio-historical construct as are claims about racial genealogical purity. Considering the numerous cultural interactions and intellectual transmissions between the Muslim world and Europe, it is highly likely that every significant Western value has a measure of Muslim blood in it.
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This is not merely a matter of acknowledging the Muslim contribution to Western thought. Rather, if we recognize the mixed lineage of ideas, a simple and straightforward taxonomy of moral values and civilizations, and what civilizations are supposed to stand for, becomes much more problematic. As for racial categories, one ought to recognize that civilizational categories are artificial political constructs that do not necessarily fit comfortably with socio- historical realities, and that many moral values do not carry a manufacturer’s label or an owner’s tag.