The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From the Extremists (18 page)

The process of critical introspection and self-knowledge, which enables a person to ascertain the true object of their submission and the real identity of their god, is necessary for building a partnership with God. But it is also a very private and personal undertaking. Unlike puritans, moderates insist that this process of self-edification and purification is a dy- namic that is entirely within the purview of one’s private rela- tionship with God, to be evaluated and adjudged only by God and the individual involved. In the moderate conception, no person has the right to judge whether any worshipper is honestly and genuinely submitting to the One and Only God or, in the alternative, worshipping some other god. This point is critically important because, as will be recalled, puritans

like ‘Abd al-Wahhab used to accuse Muslims of associating partners with God, which in effect was another way of say- ing that Muslims did not worship the One and Only God, but worshipped someone or something else. As a result, en- gaging in the practice of
takfir
— whether calling a Muslim an idolater, a polytheist, an apostate, or an infidel—‘Abd al- Wahhab and other puritans were able to justify murdering many Muslims. According to moderate Muslims, no person or institution is authorized to judge the piety of another or evaluate the closeness of any particular individual to God. In this regard, moderate Muslims rely on the Prophet’s teach- ings, which emphasized that people should not be so arro- gant as to presume that they know what is concealed in a person’s heart. The Prophet Muhammad did emphasize that ethical individuals ought to behave in a fashion that is con- sistent with their avowed beliefs, and it is hypocritical for people to claim that they believe in Islam and then act in ways that are fundamentally inconsistent with the teachings of the religion. But in numerous traditions, the Prophet Muhammad also warned Muslims against the immorality of thinking ill of others and the arrogance of presuming to know how or what God thinks about any particular person. Furthermore, in addressing the Prophet Muhammad in the Qur’an, God emphasizes time and time again that he (Muhammad) was sent but to deliver a message and not to subjugate or dominate people. Accordingly, as the Qur’an stresses, even God’s Messenger does not have the right to presume to know what is in the hearts of people. Repeatedly, the Qur’an informs the Prophet that it is up to God, not the Prophet, to forgive whom God wishes and punish whom God wishes, and God also draws near and endears whom God wishes. The Prophet’s duties end when he truthfully preaches God’s message to the best of his ability.
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Knowledge of the self is significant for building a relation- ship with God in one other important regard. Sufi Muslims or mystical orientations within Islam contended that if one truly know himself/herself, one will discover that the only true and genuine inner reality is nothing but the Divine. Through per- sistent and systematic remembrance of God, and strenuous spiritual exercises, people will uncover the genuine luminous substance within, which then makes union with the Divine truly possible. Moderate Muslims, however, have a different point of emphasis. For moderate Muslims, the issue is not so much whether the Divine is truly within; rather, the point is to maintain the integrity of the individual self and the singularity of the Divine, and in doing so to safeguard the integrity of the partnership between the individual and God.

In the course of building a partnership with God, one of the worst risks is that the individual will invent and construct God in his/her own image by projecting himself/herself onto God. The Qur’an persistently warns Muslims against the danger of transforming God into a source of validation instead of a force for moral elevation. Without critical introspection self- knowledge is not possible, and knowing oneself is necessary if a person is to avoid the risk of, through self-projection, trans- forming God into simply what validates one’s own base de- sires and whims. Thus, instead of God elevating people to a higher moral existence, God is transformed into a force justi- fying whatever follies human beings wish to do, all in God’s name. Paraphrasing the language of the Qur’an, through the guise of piety, God should not be made to rubberstamp the whimsies of people.
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A modern-day example will clarify this point. Take, for in- stance, the case of honor killings.
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In the case of an honor killing, the male family member committing the act of murder feels no shame or remorse, because he has convinced himself

that killing his sister or daughter is the will of God. That is, he believes that God wants him to kill his sister or daughter for having, for example, fornicated with her lover. Thus the male family member engages in blatant justification—he justifies his heinous act by convincing himself that this is God’s will, when in reality, it is the male family member’s own anger, vengeance, and shame that are driving his actions. Very often the male family member strongly believes that the death of the woman is satisfactory or even pleasing to God. Assuming that the perpe- trator is a devout and religious man, as a necessary prelude to the murder, the perpetrator had in effect projected his own human sentiments onto God, and therefore he was able to as- sume that what made sense to him, what shamed him and his family, and what vindicated him and his family were identical to what God wants. Rather than thinking of God as merciful, forgiving, and compassionate, he imagines God to be angry, en- raged, and vengeful. This imagined view of God was possible only because this supposedly pious and devout man heedlessly projected his own emotions and attributed them to onto God. Furthermore, if through lack of self-awareness people pro- ject themselves onto God and see God through an entirely id- iosyncratic and subjective lens, they will in all probability not love God at all. Rather, they have fashioned a god in their own image and then have fallen in love with that image. In this case, God is exploited in an entirely narcissistic process, and the purported partnership with the Divine becomes the

means for egotistical empowerment and arrogance.

When it comes to the topic of God and creation, it is not surprising that moderates and puritans have much in com- mon. However, in many ways, the differences between the two focus on their very different understandings of the meaning of submission to God. Their different conceptions of submission revolve around their variant and competing conceptions of

Divine Will or, put differently, what does God want from human beings. In contrast to the puritans, moderates do not believe that the law is a sufficient or complete expression of the Divine Will. God is too grand and majestic to be fully ex- pressed and manifested in a code of law. For moderates, to truly submit means to understand and to love—to understand oneself and understand God and love completely, fully, and without reservation. In the moderate conception, what God wants from human beings is to love—not because God needs human love but because through Divine love human beings are elevated to a higher level of moral existence in which they partake in the attributes of God. In the moderate conception, it is fundamentally inconsistent and even impossible for one to truly love God and fail to reflect, among other attributes, some of God’s vast mercy, compassion, forbearance, forgive- ness, and beauty. If a person fails to demonstrate the heavenly attributes of God, according to moderate theology, then they have not truly submitted and have not learned to love the Cre- ator of all things.

A further earmark of moderate theology is its anxiety about and even fear of power. More specifically, moderates are mindful of the many historical abuses and atrocities com- mitted by individuals in God’s name. Moderates understand God’s supremacy and the Divine demand for submission to mean that only God and no other than God is entitled to ab- solute authority and power. And because authority and power are at the heart of any religious relationship, the often intellectually and practically difficult question is: What are the implications and appropriate parameters to be drawn be- tween the sovereignty of the Divine and the autonomy of the individual?

Nowhere are these parameters more critical and pertinent than in the spheres of law and morality, for it is these two

higher sources of governance that have historically reigned over human behavior. Thus the central inquiry becomes: With respect to law and morality, does God’s sovereignty eliminate individual autonomy; and if not, what is the appropriate bal- ance to be drawn between God’s will as law and individual law-making? Are law and morality solely within the jurisdic- tion of God, or do human beings have a role to play within these two spheres as well?

Many of the questions raised in this context, whether they relate to the Divine Will, power, supremacy, and the danger of people subjugating or exploiting others in God’s name, are in- extricably intertwined with the challenging issue of the extent to which the devout followers of Islam are entitled or empow- ered to act on God’s behalf. Indeed, this has been the precise underlying theme in much of the discussion thus far.

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THE NATURE OF L AW AND MORALITY

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here is perhaps no issue that sets moderates and puritans apart as much as the subject of the nature and function of law. The law plays a central role in Islam to the point that many Muslims believe that without the law nothing remains of the Islamic religion. Nonetheless, despite its importance, the law is also the least understood aspect of the Islamic faith, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In the West, for example, some even go as far as thinking that a Muslim who believes in Shari’a law is by definition a fanatic or fundamentalist. One must admit that in the contemporary age the puritans have given Islamic law a terrible image to the extent that the moment Islamic law is mentioned, what comes to the mind of many are the horrendous abuses committed by the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, or the puritans in Sudan. Yet to accuse every Muslim who believes in Islamic law of fanaticism is akin to accusing every Jew who believes in Rabbinic or Talmudic law of being a fanatic as well. The truth is that so much hinges on the particular conception that one

has of Islamic law and the interpretation that one follows.

Islamic law is derived from two distinct sources: the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet (known as the
hadith
and Sunna). The Sunna is the orally transmitted record of what the Prophet said or did during his lifetime, as well as various re-

ports about the Prophet’s Companions. Traditions purporting to quote the Prophet verbatim on any matter are known as
ha- dith
. The Sunna, however, is a broader term; it refers to the
hadith
as well as to narratives purporting to describe the con- duct of the Prophet and his Companions in a variety of set- tings and contexts.

In Islam, the Qur’an occupies a unique and singular status as the literal word of God. Whether moderate, conservative, or puritan, all Muslims believe that the Qur’an is the literal word of God as transmitted by the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. When it comes to the Qur’an, the Prophet Muham- mad did nothing more than communicate word for word God’s revelation, and Muslims preserved the text and trans- mitted it in its original form and language to subsequent gen- erations. Muslims believe that God warranted and promised to guard the text of the Qur’an from any possible alterations, revisions, deletions, or redactions; therefore, while Muslims may disagree about the meaning and import of the revelation, there is a broad consensus among Muslims on the integrity of the text.

The Muslim belief in the integrity of the text of the Qur’an is well supported historically, but the meaning and context of the text is a far more complicated matter. At times the Qur’an addresses itself to the Prophet specifically, but on other occa- sions the Qur’an speaks to all Muslims or to humanity at large. In different contexts, the Qur’an will address Jews or Christians or the polytheists. There is a historical dynamic that contextualizes each of these occasions and thereby gives it further meaning and significance. While there is a broad con- sensus among Muslims on the integrity of the text of the Qur’an, and also on the Qur’an’s authoritativeness as God’s revealed and divine word, the historical context of the text is far more debated and contested.

After the Qur’an, most Muslims consider the Sunna of the Prophet to be the second most authoritative source of Islam. The Sunna is represented by an amorphous body of literature containing hundreds of reports about the Prophet and his Companions during the various stages of early Islamic history. Although the Qur’an and Sunna are considered the two pri- mary sources of Islamic theology and law, there are material differences between these two sources. Unlike the Qur’an, the Sunna is not represented by a single agreed-upon text. The Sunna is scattered in at least six primary texts (the compilations of Bukhari, Muslim, Nisa’i, Tirmidhi, Ibn Maja, and Abu Dawud), and many other secondary texts (e.g., those of Mus- nad Ahmad, Ibn Hayyan, and Ibn Khuzayma). In addition, there are several collections of Sunna and
hadith
that are par- ticularly authoritative among Shi’i Muslims (e.g., those of al- Kafi and al-Wasa’il).

Unlike the Qur’an, the Sunna was not recorded and written during the Prophet’s lifetime. The Sunna was not systemati- cally collected and documented for at least two centuries after the death of the Prophet. Although some documentation movements commenced in the first century of Islam, the main efforts at systematic collection and documentation did not start until the third century of the Islamic era (the ninth cen- tury of the Christian era). The late documentation of the Sunna meant that many of the reports attributed to the Prophet are apocryphal or at least are of dubious historical authenticity. In fact, one of the most complex disciplines in Is- lamic jurisprudence is that which attempts to differentiate be- tween authentic and inauthentic traditions. Furthermore, reports attributed to the Prophet are not simply adjudged au- thentic or fabricated—such reports are thought of as having various degrees of authenticity, depending on the extent to which a researcher is confident that the Prophet actually per-