Asian Age, 24/1/2002
Save Islam
from distortion
By
Anwar Syed
Karachi
From
time to time writers in this newspaper (Dawn) have called for a
debate on the direction Islam has taken, and lamented that its
teachers have been directing believers away from tolerance,
rationalism, and secularism without which, they say, we cannot
have democracy.
If
the proposed debate is to be real, the participants cannot all be
secular-minded modernists, for they are already of the same mind.
The other party must consist of those who uphold the traditional,
conservative versions of Islam. If that is the case, will the two
sides have a common language and a common framework of reference?
If not, how will they talk? It will take you nowhere to argue
issues with a theologian except on his own ground.
Debates between theologians themselves on issues corresponding to
the modernist’s concerns today have taken place in Muslim history.
Let us refer to one of the more notable of them and see how it
went. Traditional doctrine had held that all human action was
pre-destined.
In
the early eighth century Hasan al-Baasri (d. 728) and his
disciples — Wasil ibn Ata (d. 748) and Amr ibn Ubayd (d. 762) —
launched the argument that God, being supremely just, could not
hold humans accountable for actions over which they had no
control, and that all human action must therefore be treated as
resulting from the agent’s free will.
The
proponents of free will were known as the qadris. Their advocacy
did not please the Umayyad rulers, who preferred the theory of
pre-destination, for it enabled them to disown the responsibility
for their style of rule on the ground that their acts, howsoever
wicked or brutal, had been part of God’s design.
Soon
the qadris, some of whom had been put to death, merged themselves
in another school of thought, known as the Mutazilites (“Mutazilah”),
initiated by Wasil ibn Ata who was Basri’s disciple. Their
position not only included the Qadri doctrine of the free will, it
also advocated “rationalism” in dealing with issues of right and
wrong.
While the traditionalists had held that human actions became good
or bad because God had designated them as such, the Mutazilites
maintained that rightness and wrongness were the intrinsic
properties of actions, and that they were good or evil even if God
had not spoken on the subject. Human reason could discern their
inherent goodness or badness. In other words, human judgment could
go beyond the parameters of God’s word.
The
most critical, and potentially explosive, part of the Mutazilite
doctrine, is related to the nature of the Quran. In the
traditional view, the Quran, being a reflection of God’s mind, and
thus a part of His being, was co-eternal with Him. The Mutazilites,
on the other hand, contended that the Quran was something God had
created and it could not therefore be said to partake of His
eternity.
The
Mutazilite view won the approval of the Abbasid caliph, Mamun
al-Rashid (r. 813-833) and his two immediate successors. Judges
and jurists were required to subscribe to it on the pain of
dismissal from office or even death. It may incidentally be noted
that Mamun often presided over debates between theologians, both
Muslim and non-Muslim, at his court, and it was here, in this
setting, that the Mutazilite view had come to prevail.
Official approval was withdrawn, and the traditional view restored
to its earlier authority, when al-Mutwakkil ascended the Abbasid
throne in 847. The Mutazilites were now persecuted, or dispersed
and, in any case, expelled from forums of Islamic theology, never
to surface again except in books of history.
Did
this controversy have any functional consequences? Consider a
possible train of reasoning: first, perfection belongs only to God
who is the creator of all things; second, that which is a creation
of God cannot claim to partake of His perfection and must admit to
a degree of imperfection; third, the Quran is a creation of God
and, consequently, must be seen as containing elements of
imperfection; fourth, while it cannot be made perfect like God,
its imperfections may be reduced through reformulation or
reinterpretation. In other words, the Quran might be changed for
the better. Who would make the desired changes? The ulema, of
course, upon instruction of the ruler at the time. The mere
contemplation of such capability would have given Mamun al-Rashid
an immense sense of power.
Is
there a possibility that men may change the Quran really as
reprehensible as it might appear to be at first encounter? Men may
not change its words, but they may change its meaning by
reinterpreting its words. After an exegete (mufassir) has written
in new or innovative interpretations, he has in effect changed the
Quran. If his reinterpretations gain general acceptance, then the
Quran is not what it was before.
Needless to say, reinterpretations would have to remain within the
overall framework of principles and values that the Quran provides
if they are to gain general acceptance.
The
“great” Mughal emperor of India, Jalal-ud-din Akbar (r.
1556-1605), also presided over debates between spokesmen of
different religious persuasions. He was led to initiate a new
religion that would enable him to combine in his own person the
roles of pope and emperor in Christendom.
His
enterprise got nowhere beyond demonstrating how easily corrupted
the Muslim ulema of the time were inasmuch as many of them (not
all) thronged to endorse his heresy. Let us now return to the
calls for debate being issued by our Muslim modernists today. Once
again, where do they hope the debate will take us? They want
Pakistan to go forward as a tolerant, liberal, democratic society
but they contend also that it cannot be democratic unless it
embraces rationalism and secularism.
Rationalism means reliance upon reason for establishing the
validity of propositions, including those purporting to be
religious truth. Islam poses no serious impediment to the
application of reason in this area. As we have seen above, the
qadris and the Mutazilites commended it, and they did not come to
grief because of their position on this score. Note also that even
Imam Ghazali approved of resort to logic in dealing with
theological formulations.
Reaching secularism through Islam would appear to be an
exceedingly difficult exercise. Those who undertake it, for
instance, the late Professor Ali Abd al-Raziq of Al Azhar, among
others, tend to argue that the essence of Islam are is meant to
lead the believer to spiritual fulfilment. It need not therefore
be invoked in the management of worldly affairs.
This
proposition is almost impossible to sustain, and it is certainly
outside the pale of mainstream Islam. How can a book (the Quran)
which spells out the specifics of the law of inheritance in
amazing detail, designate numerous acts as crimes and prescribe
penalties for the perpetrator, commend or denounce hundreds of
other attitudes and practices in human interaction, how can such a
book be regarded as being concerned principally with man’s
spiritual well-being? And how many of us know what spirituality
means outside the Sufi frame of reference, if even that?
Yet,
a case may be made for disengaging the state in Pakistan from the
obligation to enforce the sharia. One may argue as follows:
Firstly, the Quran is virtually silent on the specifics of
organising public authorities even if it assumes their existence
to enforce its penal law.
Secondly, there is no evidence to show that it contemplates the
use of the police power of the state to implement its injunctions,
recommendations, values, and principles, and it would not be
unreasonable to suggest that it leaves their implementation to the
initiative of individual Muslims.
Thirdly, while the state in Pakistan may incorporate the law of
God and the major values and principles to be found in His word
into its own law, it may in good faith leave the bulk of the
sharia to the individual to follow according to his own lights and
abilities. Muslim, as well as western, historical experience
supports my case.
Muslim rulers generally professed to have accepted the
responsibility for enforcing the sharia and thus created a nexus
between political power and the ulema. They authorised the latter
to enforce the sharia upon ordinary Muslims but rarely, if ever,
did they submit their own personal and political conduct to its
discipline. Much worse, they corrupted many of the ulema and
persuaded them to reformulate Islamic doctrine and tradition to
suit their own political ends.
Instead of acting as an overseer to keep politics on the path of
righteousness, Islam became subordinated to politics to the ruin
of the Muslim community after the end of the pious caliphate in
661. A secular orientation in the politics of Pakistan is
desirable because it will help save Islam from further distortion,
the ulema from the quest for power and corruption, and the
community from the scourge of sectarian violence.
By
arrangement with Dawn
