Written by Karima Hamdan La distance n'y fait rien; il n'y a que le premier pas qui coûte.
The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult.
This week I was reminded of the above quote attributed to the Catholic martyr Saint Denis, a third century Bishop of Paris (and, strangely enough, the patron saint of headaches) who, apparently after having been decapitated, collected up his own severed head and walked six miles to the summit of Montmatre, preaching a sermon the entire way.
Indeed, we are willing to swallow a mountain of unpalatable events just as long as they are dished out to us one small mouthful at a time.
Take the unfolding crisis in Libya, the perfect recipe: a crusty old dictator, a zesty rebel uprising and a strong flavour of democracy. Just add to this a large drizzle of oil.
At the outset, we were told that this was a humanitarian mission to prevent a genocide of the rebels by Gaddafi. The collective revulsion at his actions allowed us to accept that something must be done and the long, drawn out negotiations of the UN Security Council had us wishing for a speedy resolution. Why oh why couldn't they just sort it out and dish us up another feel-good revolution like Egypt and Tunisia? This created need then allowed us readily to accept the proposition that a no-fly zone would be the solution and the Security Council shared our view unanimously. A no-fly zone seemed relatively innocuous: planes patrolling the skies, preventing Gaddafi's air force from bombarding the rebels whilst the whole country rose up against this man and drove him from office. So, job done, the fighter planes took to the skies and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief.
But no sooner had we sunk back into a restful repose in front of BBC News 24, eagerly awaiting the wall to wall coverage of ecstatic crowds, than we heard that French planes had engaged ground targets and that a "shock and awe" style bombing raid had been carried out by night targeting Tripoli and other Gaddafi strongholds. This was patiently explained to us as a necessary escalation to "take out" vital command and control infrastructure. So back again we settle, popcorn at the ready, on with the Arab spring.
Then came the tanks - their turrets blown off by precision bombs - and the era of the "no-drive zone" ensued. Gaddafi's forces were now being actively engaged by "Allied" planes day and night, clearing the way for the advancing rebels. "Ahhhh," we all thought, "finally Gaddafi is on his way out and then we can cross live to the surging crowds and toppling statues and John Simpson's summary piece to the camera, a carbon copy of the times when he witnessed the 'liberation' of Kabul and Baghdad."
Then came the Gaddafi fight back. The rebels retreated in disarray as their supplies of ammunition waned and the pendulum that has been Libya for the last week swung back in Gaddafi's favour. The prospect of a long drawn out conflict then began to emerge, replacing the mirage of the quick air "intervention" which was supposed to deliver victory within one news cycle.
Then came the comments from President Obama, which were echoed in quick succession by our own David Cameron: they would not rule in or rule out arming the rebels and the provision of arms and training could be realised within the remit of resolution 1973. And, faster than anyone can say "mission creep", the drum-beat of occupation and regime change seems to be growing louder.
However, the phenomenon of mission creep is not limited to ill-thought-out military interventions. I seem to recall that at one time in the dim and distant past, ISB (or The Islamic Society of Britain) was a Muslim organisation whose Islamic credentials were as rock-solid as its sincere commitment to the Ummah.
No more, it would appear.
I looked again at the Plain Islam site just in case I had missed the "irony quotes" or other hints of a prank at play (perhaps "contact us at Pauline.Yorlegg@isb.org.uk") but no, it was a deadly serious manifesto of ISB's beliefs and principles, a mission statement that leaves no room for misinterpretation. Its unashamed reformist agenda is presented in a mature format, with direct links to clear position statements by prominent reformist spokesmen on topics ranging from women to multiculturalism.
Gender Equality
The first article is about gender equality and is penned by none other than the "evolutionary revolutionary" Usama Hasan, who has found, much to his chagrin, that freedom of speech apparently does not give one the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre... or indeed "Ape-like parents" in a crowded mosque.
The article itself is classic Usama: terse, arrogant prose, dismissing generations of scholarship as "simplistic readings of the Quran", coupled with "the common phenomenon of reading the Quran and Hadith out of scriptural and historical context." Usama then offers us his own way out of this apparent quagmire:
"An alternative reading of the Quran and Hadith is given by reformist scholars who approach the subject from a variety of perspectives, including social science, feminism and the perspective of holistic readings."
Any difficulties are ironed out by the understanding that all the supposed misogynistic texts in the Quran are just examples of Allah starting the process towards full gender equality and then obviously (!) forgetting to complete it:
"...the beginning of a process of the liberation of women, not as a fixed end-point that cannot be changed."
Despite there being no support for this point of view in either the Quran or Hadith, Usama feels that once again he has stumbled across the truth of the matter which has evaded the tens of thousands of scholars who have dedicated their lives to the study of the religion throughout the history of Islam. One can detect a common theme linking together Usama's opinions: they fit in nicely with his Copernican-like world view, which places him at the centre of the Islamic universe, with all the scholars mere satellites orbiting around him.
The Nature of Law and Morality
Even more problematic is the article by Khaled Abou El Fadl entitled "The Nature of Law and Morality". In it, El Fadl describes shari'ah and fiqh as follows:
"Sharia is the eternal, immutable, and unchanging law, or Way of truth and justice, as it exists in the mind of God. In essence, Sharia is the ideal law as it ought to be in the Divine realm, and as such it is by definition unknown to human beings on this earth. Thus human beings must strive and struggle to realize Sharia law to the best of their abilities. In contrast, fiqh is the human law - it is the human attempt to reach and fulfill the eternal law as it exists in God's mind. Fiqh, unlike Sharia, is not eternal, immutable, or unchanging. By definition, fiqh is human and therefore, subject to error, alterable, and contingent."
So on one hand we have shari'ah which, in El Fadl's opinion, is in essence unattainable by humans. On the other hand, we have the apparent shifting sands of fiqh, indefinable across any given length of time. And, between the unattainable and the indefinable, we have ISB and the scores of Muslims they seek to confuse with their unfathomable and incomprehensible views on Islam, which never once ask that if Allah (the Exalted) has sent guidance, what would be the point of that guidance being unreachable?
Islam and Science
Even more bizarre is the inclusion of Ziauddin Sardar in the cadre of ISB philosophers at large. Whenever one reads anything Sardar writes about Islam, one gets the distinct impression that at some point in his pointlessly angry life he was publicly embarrassed by one of his backward brown brethren and has never quite recovered from the experience. This incident must act like the nuclear fuel rod at the fractured core of Sardar's own psychological meltdown, providing him with a steady stream of radioactive waste to spew out and poison the surrounding environment.
In the article "Islam and Science", Sardar gnashes his teeth over the lack of Muslim expertise in science today:
"The brutal fact is that Muslims, consciously and deliberately, abandoned scientific inquiry in favour of religious obscurantism and blind imitation."
And the reason for this?
"The driving force behind the scientific spirit of Muslim civilisation was the notion of ijtihad or systematic original thinking, a fundamental component of the worldview of Islam. The religious scholars, a dominant class in Muslim society, feared that continuous and perpetual ijtihad would undermine their power. They were also concerned that scientists and philosophers had a higher prestige in society than religious scholars. So they banded together and closed 'the gates of ijtihad'; the way forward, they suggested, was taqlid, or imitation of the thought and work of earlier generations of scholars. Ostensibly, this was a religious move. But given the fact that Islam is a highly integrated worldview, that in Islam everything is connected to everything else, it had a devastating impact on all forms of inquiry."
What Sardar cannot quite figure out (and therefore ignores), is that when Muslim societies were at their most devout and their most traditional, with all the hallmarks of 'backwardness' including sharia and 'blind imitation', they were also at their most scientifically advanced. Sardar omits to mention another inconvenient fact, namely that those scholars who were apparently so obsessed with their social standing that they engaged in this nefarious ijtihad gate-closure conspiracy, were usually also the same people making the scientific advancements.
But sorry, I forgot who Sardar claims to be! Let us remind ourselves with some choice quotes:
"Unlike the 'Ulama, modernist scholars do not shun the West. In fact they embrace the West in its totality, warts and all. While the traditional scholars sit on the crest of contemporary times perpetually looking back into history, modernist intellectuals place no real value on Muslim tradition and history." (Ziauddin Sardar, Islamic Futures (1985) p.352)
"I suggested that it is not only possible but necessary both for individuals and societies, now and in the future, to rise to higher levels in understanding and realization of Islamic values than those achieved by the Companions of the Prophet or their society. Indeed, the challenge of our time, I argued, was to work out values and norms that were clearly and distinctively better than those worked out by the Companions of the Prophet." (Ziauddin Sardar, Desperately Seeking Paradise (2005) p.151)
"I had no objection to Rushdie interrogating and severely criticising Islam, even in fiction. Indeed, I had been doing just that most of my own life." (Ziauddin Sardar, Desperately Seeking Paradise (2004) p.279)
In another place he described the emulation of the Prophet (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him), that is, to follow the sunnah, as a "fetish". According to him, the way forward was "to question what now goes under the general rubric of shari'ah and to declare that much of Islamic jurisprudence is now dangerously obsolete. To stand up to the absurd notion of an Islam confined by a geographically bound state. The 'gates of ijtihad' have to be thrown wide open so that the basic concepts of Islam can be framed in a broader context. Serious rethinking within Islam is long overdue." (New Internationalist, May 2002)
One can only shake one's head in disbelief that ISB could have ever engaged with such a person, let alone place him at the heart of its flagship project to explain Islam. With Ziauddin Sardar there is no ambiguity, no room for misunderstanding, no squirming out of the stark fact that he has little or no respect for anything remotely recognisable as traditional Islam.
Identity, Muslims and Multiculturalism
In his article on multiculturalism, Tariq Modood calls for greater gender equality in Islam:
"One of the key areas of renewal and reinterpretation has been equality and related concepts. This can be seen in debates about gender equality in which Muslim cultural practices and taken for granted assumptions have been subjected to severe critique through fresh readings of the Quran, the sayings and practice of the Prophet Muhammad and Muslim history, tracing the emergence of conservative and restricted interpretations at moments when other interpretations could and should have been favoured." (Mernissi 1991, Ahmed 1992, Wadud 1999)
The "fresh readings" of the Quran and hadith that Modood refers to are provided by none other than Amina Wadud, Fatima Mernissi, and Leila Ahmad. It is truly astonishing that ISB could be associated with these pseudo-scholars who advocated, amongst other things, women leading prayers, and that the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wasallam) only advocated hijab and niqab following pressure from his companions, despite it going completely against his principles. Now, it is important to note that the opinions of these women are not being used by the ISB in relation to completely unrelated matters, it being "incidental" that they just happen to hold utterly deviant beliefs on gender issues. Rather, ISB is referencing its position statement on the role of gender relations in Islam using the opinions of this trio.
...And Now for a Word From Our Sponsors
The manifesto also contains contributions from three non-Muslim authors. This is interesting because it steps away from the traditionally Islamic viewpoint that imaan is an essential requirement of those who wish to teach Muslims about their own religion, and also because these individuals make no bones about where they are coming from and where they want British Muslims to end up.
Firstly, there is Chris Hewer's article "How the Western mind reads Islam". The entire premise of the article is very revealing. One could ask why it is that a supposedly Muslim organisation is so eager to publish an article on its website that contains statements such as:
"When Europeans look at Islam, they see an integrated religious-political-economic-social system and that rings alarm bells; it reminds them of a system that they moved away from in earlier centuries."
It is also informative that Hewer concludes his article on a discordant and jarring note without any of the customary platitudes about living and learning together. Instead, he ends with this bald statement:
"When Christians think about the Quran, they find it hard to imagine that it can have been 'sent down' from God, especially six hundred years after the time of Jesus, and so they assume that the Prophet must have got it from somewhere else. Again, the Christian view of an ideal human being and 'man of God' is shaped by the life and person of Jesus and so they see contrasting elements in the life of Muhammad as being hard to reconcile: his multiple marriages, his holding political power and being the commander of the army in time of battle."
All this is hardly newsworthy. Are Muslims supposed to be gobsmacked by the revelation that non-Muslims don't think the Quran is the word of God or hold ignorant opinions of our beloved Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wasallam)? What is genuinely interesting is that ISB saw fit to publish this on its 'one stop shop' portal for all things Islamic aimed at Muslims and non-Muslims alike. It seems that injecting doubt rather than dawah is what is on ISB minds.
The contribution from another non-Muslim is equally loaded. Brian Klug places a comforting arm around the shoulders of those Muslims struggling with the "embarrassment" of believing in an All-Powerful Creator. Just as there are some Christians who "muddy the logical waters" by "treating the first chapter of Genesis as though it were a contribution to natural science", Klug seems to suggest that there are some Muslims who have the same "quaint" views of the Quran. The problem, in his view, is with "any totalitarian system of thought, whether religious or secular, traditional or modern. There is no future for a public debate that is stuck in the rut of the past. Nor can today's disagreements be resolved by fighting yesterday's battles."
No discussion about Islamic reformation can ever be had without John Esposito, professor of International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University and director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, fading into view. Esposito's methodology has always been that of promoting greater understanding of Muslims and denouncing Islamophobia, whilst concurrently agitating for Muslims to change their religion. His propaganda is subtly couched in sophisticated arguments and, given that he does speak out against Muslim hate speech, there is a tendency to feel that he speaks for the benefit of Muslims and Islam because, supposedly, "he's a friend of Islam".
The best way of dealing with Messers Hewer, Klug and Esposito is to wish them well on their journeys through life, pray that they are eventually guided aright but never to be deluded into thinking that just because they are selectively apologetic about Western attitudes towards Muslims, they speak the truth about Islam every time they engage with Muslims.
Conclusion
This is the first step, which ISB would probably acknowledge as being difficult for British Muslims to accept. After years of having wafted around the faint aroma of reforming Islam, this is the first mouthful which, if accepted and swallowed, will lead to British Muslims being force-fed a steady diet of a re-worked and re-designed Islam. Then, finally, the mission creep to deconstruct the usul al-fiqh that underpins our religion, undermining over a thousand years of scholarly endeavours, will be realised. This journey of a thousand steps will be completed with the need to "belong" in Western culture satisfied and any feelings of being "the other" banished forever.
Having skirted around the edges for a while, it seems that now some within ISB have taken their first firm steps into an area that will lead them well away from what is safe or their hoped-for destination. Whether we follow them into this arena is now the issue for every one of us. The consequences of such a conscious decision should neither be belittled nor be taken lightly, as the realm into which it leads belongs entirely to another, who is ever vigilant of cross-border incursions:
An-Nu'man ibn Basheer (Radi Allahu anhu) said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) saying:
"Surely, the halal (permissible) is clear and the haram (impermissible) is clear and between the two are doubtful unclear matters, of which many of the people do not have knowledge.
So, whoever abstains from the doubtful matters has saved his religion and his honour, and whoever falls into the doubtful matters falls into the haram (impermissible),
just as for the shepherd who lets his flock graze on the border of a protected sanctuary, it is likely that his flock will end up grazing freely therein.
Truly, every king has a protected sanctuary, and Allah's protected sanctuary is His prohibitions.
Verily in the body, there is a morsel of flesh that, if it is sound, then the whole body is set aright; and, if it is corrupt, the whole body is corrupt. It is indeed the heart."
Sahih al-Bukhari and Muslim
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