http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4436548,00.html
Islam
has a progressive tradition too
Most
western views of Muslims are founded on ignorance
Hamza
Yusuf
Guardian
Wednesday
June 19, 2002
When a
Welsh resistance leader was captured and brought before the
emperor in Rome, he said: "Because you desire to conquer the
world, it does not necessarily follow that the world desires to be
conquered by you." Today one could offer an echo of this sentiment
to western liberals: "Because you wish your values to prevail
throughout the world, it does not always follow that the world
wishes to adopt them." The imperial voice is based on ignorance of
the rich traditions of other civilisations, and on an undue
optimism about what the west is doing to the world politically,
economically and environmentally.
The
entrenched beliefs many westerners profess about Islam often
reveal more about the west than they do about Islam or Muslims.
The Ottomans were history's longest-lasting major dynasty; their
durability must have had some relation to their ability to rule a
multi-faith empire at a time when Europe was busily hanging,
drawing and quartering different varieties of Christian believer.
Today
Islam is said to be less, not more, tolerant than the west, and we
need to ask which, precisely, are the "western" values with which
Islam is so incompatible? Some believe Islam's attitude towards
women is the source of the Muslim "problem". Westerners need to
look to their own attitudes here and recognise that only very
recently have patriarchal structures begun to erode in the west.
The
Islamic tradition does show some areas of apparent incompatibility
with the goals of women in the west, and Muslims have a long way
to go in their attitudes towards women. But blaming the religion
is again to express an ignorance both of the religion and of the
historical struggle for equality of women in Muslim societies.
A careful
reading of modern female theologians of Islam would cause western
women to be impressed by legal injunctions more than 1,000 years
old that, for instance, grant women legal rights to domestic help
at the expense of their husbands. Three of the four Sunni schools
consider domestic chores outside the scope of a woman's legal
responsibilities toward her husband. Contrast that with US polls
showing that working women still do 80% of domestic chores.
Westerners, in their advocacy of global conformism, often speak of
"progress" and the rejection of the not-too-distant feudal past,
and are less likely to reveal their unease about corporate
hegemony and the real human implications of globalisation.
Neither
are the missionaries of western values willing to consider why
Europe, the heart of the west, should have generated two world
wars which killed more civilians than all the wars of the previous
20 centuries. As Muslims point out, we are asked to call them
"world wars" despite their reality as western wars, which targeted
civilians with weapons of mass destruction at a time when Islam
was largely at peace.
We
Muslims are unpersuaded by many triumphalist claims made for the
west, but are happy with its core values. As a westerner, the
child of civil rights and anti-war activists, I embraced Islam not
in abandonment of my core values, drawn almost entirely from the
progressive tradition, but as an affirmation of them. I have since
studied Islamic law for 10 years with traditionally trained
scholars, and while some particulars in medieval legal texts have
troubled me, never have the universals come into conflict with
anything my progressive Californian mother taught me. Instead, I
have marvelled at how most of what western society claims as its
own highest ideals are deeply rooted in Islamic tradition.
The
chauvinism apparent among some westerners is typically triggered
by Islamic extremism. Few take the trouble to notice that
mainstream Islam dislikes the extremists as much as the west does.
What I fear is that an excuse has been provided to supply some
westerners with a replacement for their older habit of anti-semitism.
The shift is not such a difficult one. Arabs, after all, are
semites, and the Arabian prophet's teaching is closer in its
theology and law to Judaism than it is to Christianity. We Muslims
in the west, like Jews before us, grapple with the same issues
that Jews of the past did: integration or isolation, tradition or
reform, intermarriage or intra-marriage.
Muslims
who yearn for an ideal Islamic state are in some ways reflecting
the old aspirations of the Diaspora Jews for a homeland where they
would be free to be different. Muslims, like Jews, often dress
differently; we cannot eat some of the food of the host countries.
Like the Jews of the past, we are now seen as parasites on the
social body, burdened with a uniform and unreformable law,
contributing little, scheming in ghettoes, and obscurely
indifferent to personal hygiene.
Cartoons
of Arabs seem little different to the caricatures of Jews in
German newspapers of the Nazi period. In the 1930s, such images
ensured that few found the courage to speak out about the possible
consequences of such a demonisation, just as few today are really
thinking about the anti-Muslim rhetoric of the extreme-right
parties across Europe. Muslims in general, and Arabs especially,
have become the new "other".
When I
met President Bush last year, I gave him two books. One was The
Essential Koran, translated by Thomas Cleary. The second was
another translation by Cleary, Thunder in the Sky: Secrets of the
Acquisition and Use of Power. Written by an ancient Chinese sage,
it reflects the universal values of another great people.
I did
this because, as an American, rooted in the best of western
tradition, and a Muslim convert who finds much of profundity in
Chinese philosophy, I believe the "Huntington thesis" that these
three great civilisations must inevitably clash is a lie. Each
civilisation speaks with many voices; the best of them find much
in common. Not only can our civilisations co-exist in our
respective parts of the world, they can co-exist in the individual
heart, as they do in mine. We can enrich each other if we choose
to embrace our essential humanity; we can destroy the world if we
choose to stress our differences.
·
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson is the director of the US-based Zaytouna
Institute
[email protected]