Challenging Islamo-Romanticism

I wanted to post a few informal thoughts here on the Islamic traditionalist revival that has been gaining currency in America and Europe for a while now, and has particularly grown in strength since 9/11 as the normative, moderating voice of Islam, in opposition to the extremism espoused by the Wahhabis/Salafis.

First of all, full disclosure: I am a former Muslim, but I’m not an atheist or an agnostic and follow a spiritual tradition from India. For the purposes of this post, I am not going to get into a discussion on the epistemological validity of spirituality or spiritual pursuits. However, for the sake of my criticism of traditionalist Islam, I will have to present a short explanation of why spirituality (for us universalist types anyway) is not the same thing as religion, and in fact religions, ideologies and fixed belief systems are anathema to spirituality. Spirituality, the way I experience and practice it, does not refer to holding or not holding a set of beliefs. Indeed, many mystics write about their experiences in negative terms, so that if one didn’t know any better, one might think they were skeptics or agnostics. Mystics claim that neither a mental affirmation nor a mental denial of God can express their mystical experiences: the experiences transcend belief. You will often find Sufi poetry in which it is claimed that God is both in faith (imaan) and in disbelief (kufr). Thus, contra religion, spirituality is not about belief at all. It is about self-transformation, about a transformation of one’s egoic consciousness, ultimately, into a transcendent consciousness called variously Tao, Brahman, Fana, Nirvana, and so on (this is perhaps a perennialist oversimplification of spiritual phenomenology, but for the purposes of this post I think it suffices). Thus, while I am about to critique traditionalist Islam, I have no problems with universalist Sufism like that espoused by the Sufi Order International, the Nimatullahi Order and the Nur Ashki Jerrahi Order.

Islamonormativity

Islamonormativity, n. 1. The collective perception commonly found in Islamic societies that all people a) are Muslim; and b) if they are not Muslim, they ought to be Muslim.

2. The collective expectation that children must be raised Muslim (a special case of the general prejudice found among believers of hereditary religion) and a feeling of failure if one’s children choose other paths.

3. The collective fear of lapsed Muslims or ex-Muslims, present to the extent that their very existence must be denied (something Islamonormative peoples share with their close cousins, the Islamoromantics).

4. The collective social expectation that all individuals must be enthusiastically interested in a) praying publicly, especially on Fridays; b) fasting in Ramadan, even if it’s summer and the fasts are up to 14 or more hours long, and generally tend to destroy everyone’s productivity.

Book Review: Sexual Ethics and Islam

Title: Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Hadith and Jurisprudence
Author: Kecia Ali
Year: 2006
Available At: Amazon.com

Product Description

In this lucid and carefully constructed volume, feminist academic Kecia Ali examines classical Muslim texts and tries to evaluate whether a just system of sexual ethics is possible within an Islamic framework.

Comments

Kecia Ali’s Sexual Ethics and Islam is a fascinating and refreshing look at the ethics of sexual relations in the Islamic religious tradition. It opens up with a quote from Sherwin Bailey, a writer on Christian sexual ethics, which reminds us that “some of the sexual notions transmitted to us from the past are unfounded, and their effect has proved to be damaging; but while we may deplore this, we must also make the effort to understand where they originated and why they were accepted – and to realize that their advocates were rarely moved by malevolence or stupidity.” One would do well to remember this while studying any ancient or medieval tradition. Given how often we liberals and progressives seem to absurdly assume that history began with us, I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment.

To start off with, Ali admits up front that her position is that of an American Muslim feminist who is completely free to decide which parts of the Shari’ah she wishes to follow and which parts she chooses to put aside (p. xxii):

Living in a nation where Islamic law has no coercive power, regardless of its moral weight for individual believers, I write as one with the luxury of deciding whether and how to apply religious doctrine in my own life – whether to arrange my affairs to follow the dictates of one or another school of jurisprudence, or the regulations in the Qur’an, or to follow civil law.

With this stated, Ali begins her discussion of the thorny theological problems in deriving a humanistic, egalitarian sexual ethos from the orthodox Islamic juristic tradition. To her credit, she does not avoid taboo and uncomfortable topics, and with keen logic and insight, exposes the clash between classical Islamic thought and modern sensibilities, while also appreciating some of its strengths, such as the overall sex-positivity of Imam Ghazali, whose recognition of the importance of female sexual satisfaction was remarkably progressive for that age. Another positive aspect of the Islamic tradition is that it has historically been open to contraception (through the practice of coitus interruptus) and has allowed non-procreative sex, contra Christianity. Thus, Islam can be seen to encourage both sexual openness and family planning to some degree.

However, there are considerable issues in the Islamic tradition as well. Ali questions whether the doctrine of mahr (the dowery paid by a husband to his wife) remains relevant today in a world in which men and women both work and earn money. She also feels that polygamy is no longer applicable in our age (but does not touch the topic of gender-egalitarian polyamory, which is relevant because polygamy is usually despised in polyamorous circles). She points out that the traditional attitude according to which a woman was obligated to be sexually available to her husband whenever he wanted her had practical and legal consequences: “Most jurists viewed the husband’s support of his wife as an exchange for her sexual availability to him, and agreed that her sexual refusal constituted grounds for suspension of her support” (p. 11). She adds: “The early jurists would have considered marital rape an oxymoron; rape (ightisab, ‘usurpation’) was a property crime that by definition could not be committed by the husband, who obtained a legitimate (but non-transferable) proprietary interest over his wife’s sexual capacity through the marriage contract, incurring the obligation to pay dower in exchange” (p. 12). The non-recognition of marital rape as being a serious crime is in fact defended by traditional Muslim scholars even today.

Muslim Women’s Right to Marry

The Doha Debates hosted a session with the topic, ‘Muslim Women’s Right to Marry.’ The description reads:

The Doha Debates session debating the House’s belief that Muslim women should be free to marry anyone they choose.

For the motion are Asra Nomani from America and Muhammad Habash from Syria. Against the motion are Thuraya Al Arrayed from Saudi Arabia and Yasir Qadhi, American Muslim cleric and instructor for Al-Maghrib Institute.

The debate was the fifth and final of the 2008-2009 year, filmed on May 25th, 2009 in Qatar.

The YouTube video is below.

The strongest speaker was Yasir Qadhi, who expressed the orthodox position as follows:

Yasir Qadhi, an American Muslim cleric speaking against the motion, suggested that if the debate was merely about granting “greater freedom” for women he would support it.

But because it appeared to be about giving them “unconditional rights” he had to oppose it since Islamic law forbade Muslim women from marrying a non-Muslim man as well as other women.

“Anyone arguing for ultimate freedom is arguing to destroy these boundaries.”

Is it just my imagination, or do traditionalist Muslims almost always have a field day walking all over the more liberal and progressive types?

A Critical Look at Prophet Muhammad

One of the things that drove me away from Islam personally was some of the behavior of Prophet Muhammad and the fact that the traditional Sunni Muslim orthodoxy (represented by sites such as SunniPath.com) has constructed a cult of personality around him. The orthodoxy sees Muhammad as the “best of creation”, and an example for all time, whereas from his behavior it is clear that while he may have been a gifted man, he was very much a creation of his time and culture just as we all are. In many instances, if the traditional seera or hadith collections are to be believed, Muhammad simply behaved the way people in premodern societies in general behaved. What is ironic about the Sunni cult of personality around Muhammad is that it even contradicts the Quran itself, which evidently sees Muhammad as just a man like others and not as someone infallible in any way.

Contrast the orthodox Islamic position on Muhammad to the way the prophets of Israel are viewed in Judaism: the prophets of Israel are seen as gifted human beings who were nevertheless fallible and struggling with the human condition as best as they could (for instance, see Abraham Joshua Heschel’s study of the prophets). It is possible to derive inspiration from the lives of these prophets and of Prophet Muhammad without seeing any of them as infallible or as moral examples for all time, and indeed, while acknowledging some of the things they did as untenable in the light of our modern and postmodern sense of morality and ethics.

The following video on Prophet Muhammad by Hassan is one of the most balanced ones I’ve seen. It may offend some Muslims, for which I apologize (although Hassan has only cited the classical biographies of Muhammad written by Muslims themselves), but let’s have a fair and open discussion on this. I am putting this video here to see if anybody can refute it. I thought Hassan’s conclusions were very valid.
 

 
I will have to reiterate here that any reformation of Islam and the Islamic world is impossible unless some core orthodox doctrines are questioned and, in my opinion, abandoned. These are:

1. The Quran is the literal and eternal speech of God, revealed for all time. (Classically, at least the rationalist Mu’tazilite school of thought did not see the Quran as eternal. So there IS a historical precedent for this position.)
2. Muhammad is the best and most perfect human being to have ever existed, and the last prophet for all time. Remember that even the Quran does not see Muhammad as infallible.
3. Islam is the only “pure” and God-revealed religion in the world today, with all other religions being watered down and corrupted and thus null and void (while religions that came after Islam like Baha’ism would probably be considered rank forgeries — Baha’iis are a persecuted minority in Iran today).

I know it’s a pipe dream to expect Islamic theology to drop these doctrines, but what are the alternatives? Can anybody convince me that it is possible to articulate a humanistic Islamic theology without dropping these doctrines?

Incidentally, I know of at least one group in India, calling itself New Age Islam, that does question the above three doctrines.

Can Islamic Law Evolve?

In The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Allama Muhammad Iqbal comes awfully close to saying that Quranic laws can be changed according to the requirements of the time. He admits that laws presented in hadiths may be changed if the situation requires it, but shies away from saying the same about Quran, while the reason he gives for dismissing hadith should, logically, also be applicable to Quran. The following are extracts from the sixth lecture The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam, and they would explain to you what I am talking about.

• … during the course of history the moral and social ideals of Islam have been gradually deislamized through the influence of local character, and pre-Islamic superstitions of Muslim nations. These ideals today are more Iranian, Turkish, or Arabian than Islamic. The pure brow of the principle of Tauhâd has received more or less an impress of heathenism, and the universal and impersonal character of the ethical ideals of Islam has been lost through a process of localization. The only alternative open to us, then, is to tear off from Islam the hard crust which has immobilized an essentially dynamic outlook on life, and to rediscover the original verities of freedom, equality, and solidarity with a view to rebuild our moral, social, and political ideals out of their original simplicity and universality. Such are the views of the Grand Vizier of Turkey. You will see that following a line of thought more in tune with the spirit of Islam, he reaches practically the same conclusion as the Nationalist Party, that is to say, the freedom of Ijtihad with a view to rebuild the laws of Shari’ah in the light of modern thought and experience.

• The question which confronts him today, and which is likely to confront other Muslim countries in the near future is whether the Law of Islam is capable of evolution – a question which will require great intellectual effort, and is sure to be answered in the affirmative, provided the world of Islam approaches it in the spirit of ‘Umar – the first critical and independent mind in Islam who, at the last moments of the Prophet, had the moral courage to utter these remarkable words: ‘The Book of God is sufficient for us.

• I now proceed to see whether the history and structure of the Law of Islam indicate the possibility of any fresh interpretation of its principles. In other words, the question that I want to raise is – Is the Law of Islam capable of evolution?

• Unfortunately, the conservative Muslim public of this country is not yet quite ready for a critical discussion of Fiqh, which, if undertaken, is likely to displease most people, and raise sectarian controversies.

• The primary source of the Law of Islam is the Qur’an. The Qur’an, however, is not a legal code. Its main purpose, as I have said before, is to awaken in man the higher consciousness of his relation with God and the universe. No doubt, the Qur’«n does lay down a few general principles and rules of a legal nature, especially relating to the family – the ultimate basis of social life…. The important point to note in this connexion, however, is the dynamic outlook of the Qur’an.

• Our early doctors of law taking their clue mainly from this groundwork evolved a number of legal systems; and the student of Muhammadan history knows very well that nearly half the triumphs of Islam as a social and political power were due to the legal acuteness of these doctors….But with all their comprehensiveness these systems are after all individual interpretations, and as such cannot claim any finality.

• The claim of the present generation of Muslim liberals to reinterpret the foundational legal principles, in the light of their own experience and the altered conditions of modern life is, in my opinion, perfectly justified. The teaching of the Qur’an that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessors, should be permitted to solve its own problems.

• [About Hadith] we must distinguish traditions of a purely legal import from those which are of a non-legal character. With regard to the former, there arises a very important question as to how far they embody the pre-Islamic usages of Arabia which were in some cases left intact, and in others modified by the Prophet.

• The prophet who aims at all-embracing principles, however, can neither reveal different principles for different peoples, nor leaves them to work out their own rules of conduct. His method is to train one particular people, and to use them as a nucleus for the building up of a universal Sharâ’ah. In doing so he accentuates the principles underlying the social life of all mankind, and applies them to concrete cases in the light of the specific habits of the people immediately before him. The Sharâ’ah values (Ahkam) resulting from this application (e.g. rules relating to penalties for crimes) are in a sense specific to that people; and since their observance is not an end in itself they cannot be strictly enforced in the case of future generations. It was perhaps in view of this that Abu Hanifah, who had, a keen insight into the universal character of Islam, made practically no use of these traditions.

• On the whole, then, the attitude of Abu Hanifah towards the traditions of a purely legal import is to my mind perfectly sound; and if modern Liberalism considers it safer not to make any indiscriminate use of them as a source of law, it will be only following one of the greatest exponents of Muhammadan Law in Sunni Islam.

• The transfer of the power of Ijtihad from individual representatives of schools to a Muslim legislative assembly which, in view of the growth of opposing sects, is the only possible form Ijma‘ can take in modern times, will secure contributions to legal discussion from laymen who happen to possess a keen insight into affairs.

• Can the Ijma‘ repeal the Qur’an?… There is not the slightest justification for such a statement in the legal literature of Islam. Not even a tradition of the Prophet can have any such effect.

• But supposing the companions have unanimously decided a certain point, the further question is whether later generations are bound by their decision…. I venture to think, on the authority of Karkhi, that later generations are not bound by the decision of the companions.

• The fourth basis of Fiqh is Qiyas, i.e. the use of analogical reasoning in legislation…. Qiyas, as Shafi’ rightly says, is only another name for Ijtihad which, within the limits of the revealed texts, is absolutely free; and its importance as a principle can be seen from the fact that, according to most of the doctors, as Qadi Shaukani tells us, it was permitted even in the lifetime of the Holy Prophet.

Okay, so Iqbal obviously is in a favour of a fresh interpretation of Islamic laws on the basis of the challenges of the modern times. He even goes so far as to say that hadith can be ignored, since they were meant specifically for the society in which Prophet lived and hence cannot be enforced in our times. But the thing is, why not say the same about the Quranic laws? Whatever laws are present in Quran, they were also meant, primarily, for the society in which Prophet lived. On analysis, there is no qualitative difference between the laws present in Quran and laws present in Hadith. The family laws of Quran make sense only if we consider the conditions prevalent in those times, for example, the laws about multiple wives or sexual relations with slaves, or the law of inheritance that woman should receive half of man, etc. Most of these are ill-suited for the modern society. So, why should Ijtihad not over-ride them, like it can over-ride tradition? If Ijtihad cannot repeal the Quran, then how can we have any significant fresh interpretation of Islamic laws? Perhaps this unnecessary adherence to Quranic laws, treating them as eternal is the biggest obstacle to evolution in the modern Islamic society.

(Cross-posted at A Myth in Creation.)

Sophistry, Thy Name is Traditional Religionism

Here is Shaykh Yasir Qadhi giving a thoroughly persuasive talk on why orthodox Islam is not sexist. The talk is entitled, ‘Perfect Justice: Debunking the Male Bias Myth’. In fact, this talk is so persuasive that most of it doesn’t speak of the sexist dictates in Islam at all, or of the abuse of women in Islamic societies, and certainly not of the sociology of gender! No, no, no — why would actual FACTS be of any relevance when discussing such an important topic? Instead, in an inspiring display of self-critique and introspection, most of this “debunking” is devoted to Shaykh Yasir Qadhi’s instructions — and lived experience, evidently — on how to set up psychological defense mechanisms to shut out dissenting information or points of view! Please watch the entire video and see the good Shaykh’s marvelous erudition and rationality, all expressed without the slightest sign of being flustered or emotional.
 

 
Well, I’ll be damned. I’m convinced! Convert me back to orthodox Islam, so that I undo all the intellectual, ethical and spiritual growth I’ve had since I left it and all the freedoms I gained thereby. And the rest of the world should be bowled over by this talk as well. Move over, you silly gender-egalitarian Scandinavians! The Perfect Justice of Traditional Islam is here to show the way to the 21st century!