Days ago, I showed my friend a clip about the abysmal state of the Muslim umma. It’s found here. He said it made him sad, and went on to ask me: “but what can we do? I think we need strong leaders; establish some order in our house…”
Sadly, I disagree with him. What is order? In Islam, the question is fraught with potential traps. Sunni order? Shia order? Salafist order? “Wahabist” order? Taliban order?
There are as many Islam-s as there are groups that purport to be Islamic, and nearly all of them see themselves as the ONLY valid representation of Islam. As some hardcore salafists allege, the Saved Sect (presumably themselves) is the only path to salvation.
So instead of converting moral ethics to institutions; instead of constructing public mechanisms for justice, economy, finance and education, Muslim groups focus on maintaining that illusion of rigid righteousness. Ask a mullah in a Pakistani mosque to recite Sura Mariam, and he’ll do it with aplomb. Ask him about economics, or how to establish riba-less bourses, and he’ll reward you with a blank stare. He knows nothing beyond the Koran and the walls of his fief. This isn’t meant to be a generality, but a pointer, perhaps, toward the worrying escapades of those we call “People of Knowledge”.
Is there a truly Islamic country on this planet? Look around. There are countries with Muslim majorities, certainly, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go.
And yet, it is simply disingenious to say that Islam slid backward trhough some kind of straying from the true path. Some groups, political or otherwise, advocate that as the principal reason because it forms the most convenient arguement for their own legitmacy. It might be sincere, but it is undeniably colored by an elitist world view. Shortly and brutally put- tribalism in all its glory.
“One lesson I have learnt from the history of Muslims,” Muhammad Iqbal said in a speech on Pakistan’s formation. “At critical moments in their history it is Islam that has saved Muslims and not vice versa.”
Look where Pakistan is now. A nation torn by sectarianism, seperatism. Saving faith is all very well, in its proper time and place. Would it not have been better for Muslims to sit down hard-headedly and work out institutions? Hasn’t this always been an essential part of the history of civilization, including, it must be said, Islamic civilization? It is a creative impetus that once lost, is extremely hard to recover. Islamic civilization, so to speak, has run out of steam, and chugs ever onward into painful obscurity.
I have asserted earlier that the problems do not lie with the multiplicity of Schools of Thought in Islam. They have always existed in the umma. Almost all of them, the mainstream ones at least, claim lineage from Righteous Times. They mid-wived the umma through her best and most intellectual years. What went wrong? Hardening taqlid? Possibly, but extreme taqlid (or blind adherance) is merely a symptom of the disease afflicting the umma. Its companions, no less lethal, are the withering Muslim state of mind; the shunning of modernity; the rejection of change and diversity; the paranoid adoration of what is seen to be the “most correct” interpretation of Islam.
It is no use denying that a good deal of the Islamic scheme has been brought into a false perspective though our assuming that that views of the ‘early generations’ were in every respect identical to the Law-Giver Himself.
It is the Muslim’s attitude towards ‘differences in opinion’ that has robbed the umma of its vitality. This is the real cancer that most Muslims ignore, or prefer to ignore. How many Muslims can argue now that Islam was not spread by the sword when so many of them were victims of such a progrom in the Najd of eighteenth century? The wielder of that sword believed himself to be a reformer par execellence, entrusted with the holy duty of ridding the umma of idolatry and innovation.
My friend’s question on what can be done is pertinent, but it comes centuries too late. He thinks he knows the cure- strong leadership- but that is a feudal mindset. A society must be built from the ground up. Strong institutions are the key to continuity. The Ottomans excelled at this in no small way. A leader might rise or fall, but if state institutions are resilient, moral and confident, such disturbances are but a drop of water in an ocean. The shariah, interpreted literally, means ‘the way to a watering-place’. It is accessible to everyone with ability, an intellectual exercise that is supposed to produce equity, good living. It is supposed to reduce hardship, and engender an attitude of awe at the signs (ayat) of Allah, forever replayed in the rising and setting of the sun and moon. The Prophet is said to have prayed: “Lord, increase me in my marvelling!”
The shariah is not a source for vulgar contention. It is a public contract, not a means for leaders to control their people, or curtail their natural rights. Muhammad Asad wrote:
“The great mistake (of fundamentalists), is that most of these leaders start with the hudud, criminal punishment. This is the end result of the sharia, not the beginning. The beginning is the rights of the people. There is no punishment in Islam which has no corresponding right.”Shariah is the collective effort of a community in sincere taqwa, or God-Consciousness. Take away ikhlas, or sincerity, and all you have is petty quibbling, resentment, caprice, a community that is random, unstable and torn from its roots. In short- The Now!
“Don’t do this. People [in various parts of the Muslim lands] already possess a body of knowledge based on reports they have received and sayings of the Prophet they have heard prior to this. Each group of people acts according to what came to it first, and so there are variations in people’s practices. Leave the people of each region to follow what they themselves choose.” [1]Will Islam go the way of Christianity in Europe? It’s hard to say. Islam is at the crossroads; in fact, it has always been at the crossroads of either oppressing its people, or uplifting them to their natural responsibilities of being vicegerents of earth. Islam is never at rest, should never be at rest. It works best when its adherents are not motile weeds. The Prophet stressed moderation because with Islam, it is one of the hardest ideal to reach. The truth of Islam is so compelling, it always has the danger of pushing a person into smug puritanism, or outright rejection.
Notes:
1. From the Ethics of Disagreement in Islam, by Taha Jabir al Alwani.
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