Asghar
‘Ali Engineer's Quest for an Islamic Theology of
Peace and Religious Pluralism
Yoginder Sikand
At a time when religion has assumed a particular potency in
shaping and defining inter-community and inter-state rivalries the
world over, the need for evolving alternate understandings of
religion to creatively deal with the fact of religious pluralism
has emerged as a pressing necessity. This is an issue for
concerned and socially engaged believers in all religious
traditions. This paper deals with only one particular religion,
Islam, looking at how, contrary to widely-head stereotypical
notions, it can be interpreted to promote inter-faith dialogue and
amity between followers of different faiths. This discussion
centers on the work of a noted Indian Muslim scholar-activist,
Asghar ‘Ali Engineer, seeing how he deals with the primary sources
of Islam in order to develop an Islamic theology of pluralism and
social justice. Given the fact that in many parts of the world
today conflicts involve Muslims and people of other faiths, these
being generally defined as ‘Islamic’ jihads by radical Islamists,
Engineer’s creative approach to the Qur’an offers us an alternate
way of imagining Islam and Islamic rules for relations between
Muslims and others. In turn, this way of approaching Islam,
fashioning Islam as an instrument of peace instead of a tool for
war and bloodshed, can help counter the appeal of radical
Islamism and help work towards the peaceful resolution of many
conflicts in which Muslims are involved.
Asghar ‘Ali Engineer: The Man
Asghar ‘Ali Engineer was born in 1939 at the town of Salumbar, in
the Udaipur district of the western Indian state of Rajasthan. His
father, Shaikh Qurban Hussain, was the priest of the town’s Shi’a
Isma’ili Bohra community. From his father he learnt the Arabic
language, as well as Qur’anic commentary (tafsir), Islamic
jurisprudence (fiqh) and the sayings of or about the Prophet
Muhammad (hadith) as contained in the books of the Bohras.
Alongside this, he was also provided a secular, modern education.
He earned a degree in engineering from the University of Indore
and then worked for some twenty years as a civil engineer with the
Bombay (now Mumbai) Municipal Corporation.
In 1972, Engineer quit his job and immersed himself
in the struggle against the Bohra head-priest, Sayyedna
Burhanuddin, protesting against what the reformers saw as his
exploitative practices. Along with other reformers, Engineer was
instrumental in setting up the Central Board of the Dawoodi Bohra
Community, to carry on the reform campaign. The reformers did not
seek to challenge the Bohra religion as such. Rather, they defined
themselves as believing Bohras, and argued that their sole concern
was that the Sayyedna and his family should strictly abide by the
principles of the Bohra faith and end their tyrannous control over
the community, which they branded as ‘un-Islamic’. In the course
of the struggle against the Sayyedna, Engineer developed his own
understanding of Islam as a means and a resource for social
revolution. One can discern in his thought and writings a
multiplicity of influences: Mu’tazilite and Isma’ili rationalism,
Marxism, western liberalism, Gandhism, and Christian liberation
theology, and the impact of the Iranian ‘Ali Shari’ati as well as
Indian Muslim modernists such as Sayyed Ahmad Khan and Muhammad
Iqbal.
His active involvement in the Bohra reformist
movement led Engineer to establish contact with other progressive
groups working for social transformation in India. Gradually, the
focus of his activity broadened from activism within his own
community to embrace several other causes. Of particular concern
to him was the growing conflict between Hindus and Muslims in
India. Engineer wrote extensively on Hindu-Muslim relations,
insisting that new understandings of religion were needed to help
promote better relations between the two communities. In 1980, in
order to promote new, more progressive understandings of Islam, he
set up the Institute of Islamic Studies in Mumbai, through which
he established links with progressive Muslims in other parts of
India and elsewhere. In 1993 he established the Centre for the
Study of Secularism and Society, also in Mumbai, in order to
investigate incidents of Hindu-Muslim conflict, to promote new
interpretations of both Hinduism and Islam as a means to promote
communal harmony, and to network with activists and the media.
Engineer is best described as a public intellectual
or as a scholar-activist. Lacking a traditional Islamic education,
his understanding of Islam grows out from his close involvement
with movements struggling for social justice and reform and from
his own study of the Islamic tradition. For him, new
understandings of Islam must address themselves to changing social
contexts, and religion, if it is at all to remain true to what he
sees as its inner spirit, must make a positive contribution to
progressive social change. Muslims struggling for social
transformation should, he insists, take their religion seriously,
and actively intervene in the struggle for discursive hegemony by
offering progressive understandings of Islam. To abandon the task,
he argues, would allow for ‘reactionaries’, including both the
conservative ‘ulama as well as militant Islamists, to monopolise
the terrain of Islamic discourse. Hence, progressive Muslim
intellectuals must also seek to establish close and organic links
with the masses and involve themselves in mass movements and
activist groups working for social change. Islamic scholarship,
then, is not to be seen as a mere intellectual exercise, but,
rather, one deeply rooted in praxis. Engineer exemplifies this
best himself. His own writings are geared to a mass readership,
generally published in newspapers and popular magazines, and use a
simple and easily understandable language that can readily appeal
even to a non-Muslim reader with little or no previous knowledge
of Islam.
Engineer’s Hermeneutics of the Qur’an and the Islamic Tradition
The Qur’an forms the basic source for Engineer’s hermeneutical
project. In his writings, the Hadith or the Prophetic traditions,
and the formulations of medieval fiqh play only a very limited
role. Occasionally, references to stray Hadith are made to
reinforce or legitimise a particular stance, but this is done on a
very selective basis. Hadith that go against his own position are
ignored. As Engineer sees it, the Qur’an, like any other text, can
be interpreted in diverse ways. It is not a closed book, with only
one set of clearly specified meanings. Being rich in symbolism, it
can be interpreted in different ways by different people in order
to promote different political projects. New ways of understanding
the text also emerge as a result of, and a response to, the
development of human knowledge in other spheres and the maturation
of human experience.
While the Qur’an itself is eternal and God-given,
the interpretation (tafsir) of the Qur’an is always, he insists, a
human product. Like all other human products, he argues,
interpretations of the Qur’an carry the imprint of their times.
They may, to varying degrees, reflect the truths of the Qur’an but
cannot claim to represent the divine truth in its entirety. Since
the interpreters of the Qur’an, like other human beings, are
members of certain social groups, located in specific spatio-temporal
and social contexts, their understandings of the Qur’an are
naturally coloured by their own location. Hence, their own
interpretations of the Qur’an cannot be said to be free from human
biases. Indeed, to claim that one can gain access to the total
truth of the Qur’an, and to insist that the historical shari’ah,
which is a product of human reflection on the divine commandments,
represents the Will of God, has no justification in Engineer’s
understanding of Islam.
It is, he obliquely suggests, tantamount to commit
the biggest sin in Islam, that of claiming infallibility, which is
akin to shirk or the crime of associating partners with God.
Since all Qur’anic interpretation, which includes the formulation
of the historical shari’ah, is, by nature, partial, and,
therefore, incomplete, reflecting the context in which the
interpreter is located, the search for a total and complete
understanding of the Will of God, as expressed in the Qur’an, is
fruitless. Rather, Engineer contends, Muslims can only hope to
gain further, but always limited, understanding of the Divine
Will, by engaging in constant reflection on the Qur’an in the
light of new and unfolding circumstances. The hermeneutical key to
this contextual understanding of the Qur’an is to be found in the
distinction that Engineer makes between the ‘spirit’ and the
‘letter’ of the Qur’an, which he sometimes also refers to
respectively as the ‘normative’ and the ‘contextual’ aspects of
the divine revelation.
The foundation of the Qur’an is provided by a set
of values that infuses the entire revelation. Four key values are
said to form the basis of the entire divine document: justice (‘adl),
benevolence (ihsan), reason (‘aql) and wisdom (hikmah). The basic
intention of the Qur’an, Engineer argues, is to bring human beings
into close communion with God, while at the same time inspiring
them to actively work for a society that is based on these
cardinal values. Engineer notes that while the Qur’an is replete
with general exhortations to the believers to submit to God and to
actively struggle for a just and peaceful social order, it
contains only a few detailed legal statements as to exactly how
the cardinal divine values should be actually implemented. This,
he says, is hardly surprising, for the Qur’an is not meant to be a
book of detailed law.
Rather, it is, above all, a call for a just social
order based on new value system, and the institutional forms that
express these values can, and indeed must, radically differ across
space and time.
Since it is the divine values that are the corner
stone of the Qur’an, they must infuse any contemporary
interpretation of the divine revelation if it is to be truthful to
the Will of God. Engineer contends that any truthful attempt to
understand seeks God’s Will for humanity as expressed in the
Qur’an must be firmly grounded in this set of values.
This has particular relevance in interpreting the
clear legal commandments of the Qur’an on contentious issues such
as women’s rights or relations with non-Muslims. For Islamists,
the Qur’anic commandments on these issues have an eternal
validity. Engineer, on the other hand, appeals for a contextual
reading of the Qur’an, arguing that the legal pronouncements in
the divine revelation, as well as in the historical shari’ah, do
not have a universal validity across space and time. Thus, unlike
the basic values that infuse the text, they are not of fundamental
importance.
Rather, Engineer insists, they are specific to the
particular context of seventh century Arabia when the Qur’an was
revealed. To seek to impose them in today’s world would not only
be anachronistic, it would also be a violation of the Divine Will.
Any divine revelation has to take into account the particular
social context in which it is revealed if at all it is to take
root. Thus, for instance, the Qur’an accepted slavery as an
institution and tolerated a degree of male supremacy, for in the
society in which it was revealed slavery and patriarchy were
deeply rooted. Were it to have condemned both outright, it would
have been rejected completely.
Yet, Engineer argues, the fundamental values that
infuse the Qur’an are at odds with both slavery and patriarchy and
actually encourage Muslims to struggle to overcome them.
Accepting, as a temporary provision, the existence of slavery and
patriarchy, the Qur’an appealed to the believers to struggle to
transcend them and work for a society where these would be finally
abolished. Thus, it sought to improve the condition of slaves and
women, as evidenced by the numerous commandments in the Qur’an
regarding their rights.
Because of the specific context in which the Qur’an
was revealed, it could not abolish slavery and patriarchy
completely or all at once, but the fundamental values of the
Qur’an clearly suggest that this is indeed God’s Will. Hence,
Engineer contends, Muslims today must struggle to translate the
Divine Will into actual practice by doing away with social
inequalities and patriarchy. The commandments in the Qur’an that
seem to militate against women’s rights or social equality must
then be understood as specific to the context of seventh century
Arabia, and not to have universal validity. To attempt to
fossilize them and impose them today would be a violation of God’s
plans for humankind, for while the fundamental values of the
Qur’an are valid for all times, the forms that these values have
taken in the Qur’an, by way of detailed laws and legal
pronouncements, are not, for the notion of what is just and
equitable changes over time. While the laws for women, for
instance, as given in the Qur’an, were a considerable advance over
the practices of pre-Islamic Arabia, they were, Engineer insists,
specific to a particular time and place. The Qur’an itself wills
that these be transcended to accord with new understandings of
justice. To insist that these laws must be applied in today’s
world would be to go against God’s Will, for they do not represent
justice as we understand it today.
Engineer submits the other sources of Islamic law, including the
Hadith and the historical shari’ah, in the form of the
formulations of fiqh, to a similar critical contextual reading.
The corpus of Hadith is seen, on the whole, as suspect and thus
not wholly reliable. Engineer reminds his readers that the Prophet
had himself warned his followers not to take anything from him but
the Qur’an, and that the first caliph of the Sunnis, Abu Bakr, had
sternly forbidden the collection and compiling of Hadith. Despite
this, the early Muslims began collecting the Hadith, and some even
concocted a large number of sayings to legitimise their own vested
interests. This is said to have been actively encouraged by the
Umayyad and later, the Abbasid, rulers, to bolster their own
claims to rule. In other words, the corpus of Hadith as it exists
today is, as such, not reliable and cannot be said to be
completely faithful to the message of the Prophet. Engineer does
recognize the existence of genuine (sahih) Hadith, but argues that
not all genuine Hadith have an eternal relevance. Like the
legislative sections of they Qur’an, they, too, were relevant for
the particular social context of seventh century Arabia. To
imagine that they can be mechanically applied in today’s context
is to go against the Will of God and the intention of the Prophet.
Engineer sees the task of the believer in dealing with these
Hadith, as with the legislative pronouncements of the Qur’an, as
being to extract the fundamental values that underlie them rather
than to follow them to the letter. Based on these values, new laws
and structures need to be evolved in accordance with the needs and
demands of today’s times, that may indeed differ in form from
those of seventh century Arabia but which would be based on the
same ethical impulse.
The historical shari’ah, Engineer contends, arguing against those
Muslims who see it as divinely mandated, is actually a human
product, based on a human reading of the Qur’an and the sunnah or
practice of the Prophet. The founders of the fours schools (mazahib)
of Sunni law, as well as the Shi’a Imams, were, after all, human
beings, products of their times, and, although presumably
well-intentioned, were not infallible. To claim that they could
not err is to attribute divinity to them, which is contrary to the
Qur’anic insistence on monotheism (tauhid). They were influenced
by their own social location and by the standard of knowledge of
the world available to them, and these were reflected in their own
understandings of religion. Further, medieval fiqh and theology
did not remain immune to political compulsions, and numerous
‘ulama, employed or patronized by the state, developed
interpretations of Islam to suit the interests of the dominant
classes, often at the expense of the true import of the Qur’an. To
accept their understandings of Islam as normative and binding,
Engineer insists, would thus be to betray the Qur’an itself.
Hence, he argues, Muslims today must develop a new understanding
of their faith, a new theology and a new jurisprudence
unencumbered by past precedent.
In Engineer’s scheme of Qur’anic hermeneutics, a constant dynamic
and dialectical relation is sought to be established between the
particular social context, on the one hand, and the Qur’an, as the
fundamental source of Islam, on the other. Praxis, active
involvement in changing society for the better, must be related to
new understandings of the Qur’an. Likewise, new visions of Islam
must be developed in order to promote or legitimise practical
action in working for social transformation inspired by the
fundamental ethical impulse or foundational values of the Qur’an.
This way of reading the Qur’an uncovers new meanings of the divine
revelation in the process of actively intervening in the world in
order to transform it. In turn, this inspires Muslims to work in
new directions and in new ways to change society in accordance
with the Divine Will. The ever evolving understandings of Islam
that emerge from this process of praxis-reflection-praxis are said
to be a sign of the Qur’an’s eternal validity, not in terms of its
detailed, and context-specific legal pronouncements, but in terms
of the values on which the entire scripture is based. In this
dynamic, the constantly evolving understandings of Islam are to be
rooted in reason, for the ‘word of God’ cannot contradict the
‘work of God’ as expressed in the laws of science. Hence, as human
knowledge expands, the understandings of Islam must also be
accordingly transformed.
The distinction that Engineer makes between what he
describes as the normative core and the context-specific portions
of the fundamental sources of Islam, the former being held as
valid for all times and the latter being specific only to the
context of the Prophet’s times, enables him to produce a vision of
Islam that is dynamic, open and, as he sees it, eternally
relevant. By going directly to the Qur’an, he by-passes centuries
of tradition as developed by the ‘ulama. He views the schools of
fiqh of the traditional ‘ulama as representing a fossilized
religion that stresses the letter of the law above its spirit and
lacks the capacity to come to terms with the challenges of
modernity. The ‘ulama are seen to have been complicit in assisting
dominant groups in developing a ‘feudalised Islam’ that has
totally betrayed the true values of the faith. Engineer’s
understanding of Islam also naturally puts him at odds with the
Islamists, whose call for the creation of an Islamic state and the
imposition of the historical shari’ah he considers as extremely
regressive and, in fact, ‘un-Islamic’.
The Islamists see the shari’ah as a fixed body of
laws, and although they admit the need for ijtihad or creative
interpretation of the law on matters where the Qur’an and the
Hadith are silent, they insist that the clear legal pronouncements
of these two principle sources cannot be over-ruled. Engineer’s
ijtihad is far more radical and embracing in its scope. He argues
that ijtihad must, if need be, also extend to the legal
pronouncements of the Qur’an and the Hadith. Hence, aspects of the
historical shari’ah as well as certain legal pronouncements in the
fundamental sources of Islam that might seem to militate against
modern sensibilities must be critiqued, and new legislation should
take their place, if required, so that the laws that govern
society are in accordance with the fundamental values of the
Qur’an, although the forms that these laws take might well differ
radically from those found in the historical shari’ah.
Towards a Contextual Islamic Theology for India
As Engineer sees it, the Qur’an is open to a variety of
interpretations, and can be used to justify a diverse range of
political projects. His primary concern is to develop a theology
of Islam that is rooted in and relevant to the particular context
in which the Muslims of India find themselves placed. To imagine
that a vision of Islam developed elsewhere or in a different
period of history, and this includes the historical shari’ah as
formulated by the medieval jurists, could be arbitrarily imposed
in today’s Indian context is not just poor sociology. It is, above
all, Engineer insists, poor theology and, in fact, goes against
the Will of God.
The particular situation in which the Muslims of
India find themselves today, which forms the basis on which
Engineer’s formulates his own contextual theology, is
characterised by multiple oppressions, including of caste, class,
gender and religion. Traditional understandings of religion are,
as Engineer sees it, part of the problem rather than the solution,
for these, he argues, have been formulated by dominant groups to
justify their own interests, to preserve the status quo and to
justify these multiple oppressions. These understandings of
religion have also been employed to promote conflict between
people of different faiths. For Engineer, a truly Islamic theology
for contemporary India is one that takes the context of multiple
oppressions and the existence of religious plurality seriously,
and is at the same time based on what he sees as the cardinal
values of the Qur’an.
As Engineer views it, since the foundational values
of the Qur’an consist of justice, benevolence, equality and peace,
a meaningful contextual theology for India, faithful to the Qur’an
and God’s Will, must be constructed in such a manner as to promote
social justice in terms of relations between castes, classes and
the genders, and peaceful relations between Muslims and people of
other faiths. Aspects of the Qur’an, the Hadith and the historical
shari’ah that seem to militate against these objectives are seen
as having no relevance today, being applicable only to a previous
historical context. This enables Engineer to present an
understanding of Islam that he sees as appropriate for the
particular historical context that the Muslims in India find
themselves placed in.
Islam and Inter-Faith Relations
Promoting better relations between Muslims and people of other
faiths is one of Engineer’s principal concerns. He has been
involved in several inter-faith dialogue initiatives, both in
India as well as abroad, and has written extensively on the
subject. Engineer argues that a faithful understanding of Islam in
today’s context must take the pluralist predicament seriously. To
be religious today is, in fact, to be inter-religious. To ignore
the question of religious pluralism and the need for harmonious
relations between people of different faiths, as the traditional
‘ulama seem to have, he warns, is to consign oneself to complete
irrelevance.
In fashioning a theology of religious pluralism,
Engineer addresses the central question of the nature of truth. Is
truth one or many? Is truth absolute or relative? Are there
different degrees or levels of truth? Can one religion claim to
possess the whole truth? Are all religions other than Islam
without any truth? Can non-Muslims be saved by following their own
religions if Islam is really the one true religion? In answering
these questions Engineer examines the Qur’anic perspective on
humankind and the universality of revelation. He writes that all
human beings, irrespective of religion, are creatures of God, made
from one set of primal parents, and in that sense, equal in His
eyes. All human beings are ‘of inestimable divine value’ and hence
must be not just equally respected, but also equally loved. He
argues that all religions come from the same source, the one God,
and reflect the Truth in different ways.
As the Qur’an insists, God has sent prophets to all
nations, and all of them have taught the same basic religion or
din, al-Islam or ‘submission’ to God. Further, the Qur’an also
clearly lays down that a Muslim must believe in all the prophets
of God, including those whom it does not mention by name, and hold
them in equal respect. The various prophets taught the same
religion, but some prophets were assigned with teaching a new law
(shar’iah) which was meant to suit the particular conditions of
the people to whom they were sent. It is, however, the din, and
not the shari’ah, that is the fundamental message of God as
expressed through the prophets. While the din remains the same,
the shari’ah can differ, and hence the latter is subordinate to
the former.
All historical religions, therefore, are emanations
from this primal din of God, and hence they are, at root, the
same, and none can be dismissed as ‘illegitimate’ or ‘false’.
Although he does not state it explicitly, Engineer appears to
suggest that there is little to choose from among the various
religions, as they are all, he seems to believe, roughly identical
to each other. They are seen to share a common set of value
orientations, such as truth, non-violence, love, justice, equity,
tolerance and compassion. He recognizes that in terms of doctrine
and ritual practice they do differ from each other, as also in
matters of prayer and ritual. These, however, are to be treated as
strictly secondary, and in God’s eyes, as ultimately of little or
no importance. For God, Engineer argues, what is important is the
ethical orientation and action of a person and not the content of
his belief or the ritual forms in which that belief is expressed.
Engineer seems to suggest, therefore, that ultimate salvation
hinges on good deeds and not on ‘correct’ belief or ritual action.
While recognising that rituals ‘have a significance
of their own’, as ‘psychological supports’, he contends that they
are ‘not central to a religion’ and that, therefore, they ‘can be
neglected’, unlike the fundamental values. Thus, a ‘truly
religious person’ is said to be one who, inspired by these values,
does good deeds, irrespective of whether or not he or she follows
a particular set of rituals.
While Engineer’s argument of the universality of
revelation and the unity of the din is strictly Qur’anic, he does
not pay sufficient attention to the Qur’anic account of how and
why the different historical religions differ from each other,
despite their common origins in the primal din. He does not
seriously engage with the Qur’anic understanding of tahrif or the
‘corruption’ by people of the scriptures given to them by prophets
before Muhammad. Engineer’s answer is that the differences between
the different historical religions, which he sees as different
forms of the same din, are not to be denied, for that would be to
ignore the very real differences between them as well as the
uniqueness of each religion. However, he argues, it is for God
alone to judge where the religions differ and to decide which one
is true or possesses a greater degree of truth. This would come
about only on Judgment Day. Till then, the best course for human
beings is to focus on what the different religions share in common
rather than on what divides them from each other, and to work, in
accordance with the Will of God, for social justice and peace for
all. Meanwhile, human beings should shelve all religious and
doctrinal disputes, desist from trying to prove the superiority of
one religion over the others, and, instead, ‘vie with each other
in good deeds’.
This, then, calls for people of various faiths to
dialogue with each other on the basis of what they have in common.
Participants in inter-religious dialogue, Engineer insists, must
abide by certain basic rules. They must not assume that their
religion is superior to those of others. In addition, they must
not simply tolerate other faiths but, in fact, respect their
teachings and their integrity. They must also not been motivated
by any desire to convert others to their faith. Rather, dialogue
must be impelled by a desire to move towards discovering the
Truth, which can be approached by being open to multiple
expressions of truth that one comes to face with through dialogue.
Finally, even if the dialogue partners fail to agree on every
point, they should not allow the encounter to take the form of
polemics.
For Engineer peaceful dialogue between Muslims and
people of other faiths is seen as integral to the Qur’anic
message. Islam is seen as positively exhorting Muslims to dialogue
with people of other faiths. Thus, dialogue is actually a divinely
ordained duty for Muslims, and not something that they can treat
as an afterthought. The basic framework of the dialogue project is
seen as having been laid down in the Qur’an itself. Thus, the
Qur’an insists that Muslims must recognize that God is ‘The
Sustainer of the Worlds’ (rabb ul-‘alamin) and not just of Muslims
alone. The Qur’an accepts religious pluralism as a sign of God’s
Will. Indeed, it is, Engineer suggests, a part of God’s plan for
the world, for if He had so willed he could have made all humans
to follow just one religion.
Thus, the Qur’an says that although God could have
made all people one, He has, in His wisdom, ‘appointed a law and a
way’ for different communities, so that he can ‘try them’, despite
their differences. This is said to suggest that the different
historical religions, in all their diversity, have been created by
God Himself. To attempt to destroy this plurality by insisting on
the truth of one religion alone, even if that religion be Islam,
is thus said to be ‘against His will’. The Qur’an adds,
immediately after, that people, following different laws and ways,
must vie with each other ‘in virtuous deeds’. This implies,
Engineer argues, that the Qur’an ‘clearly discourages believers to
[sic.] enter into theological polemics’, and, instead, encourages
them to ‘excel each other in good deeds’. In other words, what
pleases God is not so much ‘correct’ belief as ‘correct’ ethical
action. Since God has created a multiplicity of religions, Muslims
must not just tolerate them, but, indeed, ‘respect’ them.
Furthermore, the Qur’an insists that Muslims preach their message
through ‘gentle words’ and in a manner that would not provoke
hostility or conflict.
Then again, the Qur’an reminds Muslims that there
can be no compulsion in religion, for it recognizes the inherent
right of all people to believe in what they want. Engineer
exhorts Muslims to seek inspiration from the Sufis in order to
relate to people of other faiths, and sees Sufism as containing
valuable resources for developing an appropriate Islamic theology
of religious pluralism. Thus, he writes that many Sufis believed
in the concept of ‘unity in existence’ (wahdat al-wujud), which he
describes as a form of pantheism that makes for a recognition of
the innate oneness of all humankind and the presence of God in all
religions. They also preached the ‘welfare of all’ (sulh-i kul),
and universal love, and in this made no distinction between
Muslims and people of other faiths.
Dialogue can take various forms and be engaged in
for several purposes. The first is what Engineer calls the
‘dialogue of life’. This is a form of dialogue that is not
formally articulated in theological statements. People of
different religions interact with each other informally, as
friends or colleagues in the work place, and attend each other’s
religious festivals. The second, more structured, form of dialogue
is the exchange of views between theologians, in the course of
which each comes to learn about the religious beliefs of the
other. In the course of such dialogue one deepens and enriches
one’s own faith, for in the process one gains insights from other
faiths that one’s religion lacks or does not seem to stress
adequately. No religion, Engineer argues, is radically sufficient
by itself. Rather, through dialogue one realizes how, in many
respects, religions can be ‘complimentary’ to each other. Thus, he
writes that while Islam stresses justice, Buddhism stresses
non-violence and Christianity love. By dialoguing with Buddhists
and Christians, then, Muslims can gain new insights that can be
used to evolve new interpretations and understanding of their own
religion. In this sense, all religions are invited to a form of
‘conversion’ through dialogue. This does not, however, mean that
in the process of theological dialogue all differences between the
religions would be negated or denied. Rather, partners in the
dialogue process should, at first, try to reconcile their
differences, and Engineer offers the example of numerous Sufi and
Bhakti saints of India who attempted to do this. If, despite this,
certain doctrines or beliefs of one religion cannot be accepted by
the followers of another, the dialogue partners must learn to live
together in amity and respect their differences.
The third, and more promising, form of dialogue is
when social activists, along with socially-engaged theologians,
come together, each inspired by his or her own religion, to work
for common social projects and causes, such as social justice,
peace, love and harmony between people of different faith
traditions. Islam, and indeed, other faiths, is seen as having a
divine mandate to radically transform social structures, to end
poverty and the multiple oppressions of caste, class, ethnicity
and gender. Hence, a major goal of the dialogue project is seen
as bringing Muslims together with people of goodwill from other
faiths to jointly struggle for a new, socialist society where the
fundamental social contradictions are resolved. Engineer thus
seeks to develop an Islamic theology of liberation and pluralism
which he regards as having been the essential mission of all the
prophets of God, but which Muslims, like others, have long
forgotten, having reduced religion to a set of sterile doctrines,
dogmas and rituals. The role of true religion, Engineer stresses,
is not simply to interpret the world, but also to transform it, to
create a new society based on the cardinal values that he sees all
religions sharing in common: justice, equality, benevolence,
compassion and freedom.
Since Engineer’s principal concern is to develop a
relevant theology rooted in the Indian context, dialogue between
Muslims and Hindus is seen as particularly urgent. New
understandings of Islam, and, for that matter, Hinduism, are
regarded as essential to promote better relations between Hindus
and Muslims and to counter groups among both communities which
seek to promote conflict between the two based on their own
distorted understandings of their religion. In formulating a
relevant Islamic theology of religious pluralism for India,
Engineer is forced to come to terms with traditional Muslim
understandings of Hinduism as a religion and of Hindus as a faith
community.
These understandings, he argues, are rooted in a
‘feudal Islam’ that developed at a time when political power was
in the hands of Muslims in India, and when Hindus were seen by
many ‘ulama as political, and hence, religious enemies of Islam
and Muslims. Hence, he claims, these traditional understandings do
not actually reflect the ‘true’ Qur’anic position and must be
adequately revised. Since God has sent prophets to teach his din
to all peoples, He must, Engineer argues, have sent prophets to
the people of India as well. Indeed, as he points out, several
Muslim scholars and Sufis have argued that Rama and Krishna,
worshipped as gods by the Hindus, might actually have been
prophets of God. Consequently, Muslims must hold these figures in
high regard. Further, even if these figures were not prophets of
God, the Qur’an insists that Muslims must not revile or abuse the
objects of worship or reverence of people of other faiths. If
Muslims were thus to abide by the Qur’an in this matter, Engineer
suggests, they would be able to clear many misunderstandings that
Hindus have of Islam, and thereby help promote inter-communal
amity.
For many Muslims, the ambiguous status of Hindus in
Islamic law constitutes a major hurdle in promoting dialogue with
them. Unlike the Christians and the Jews, they find no mention in
the Qur’an, and have often been seen as idolators, with whom
dialogue is ruled out. While noting that many ‘ulama have
described the Hindus as kafirs and mushriks (polytheists),
Engineer argues that this is misleading, for the Hindus, he
contends, are actually monotheists and that their holy book, the
Vedas, might actually have been a divine revelation. Hence, they
must, he insists, be treated as ‘People of the Book’ (ahl-i kitab)
instead, sharing a similar status to the Christians and Jews. Recognising
the inability of traditional fiqh to provide positive images of
the Hindus, Engineer suggests that Muslims should seek inspiration
and guidance from the teachings of certain Indian Sufis, as well
as Hindu Bhakta saints, who were concerned to explore the
similarities, rather than focus on the differences, between
Hinduism and Islam. He argues that in today’s India the ‘openness’
of Sufism and Bhakti Hindu devotion are essential resources in
helping to promote inter-faith harmony.
In order to help develop more positive images of
each other and to bring them closer, Engineer is at pains to
stress the cultural elements that many Indian Muslims share with
their Hindu neighbours. He strongly opposes advocates of a ‘pure’
Islamic culture, arguing that there exists no such thing. Rather,
he says, Islam has taken different forms in different parts of the
world as it has sought to root itself in different cultural
contexts. He goes so far as to negate the notion of a singular
Islam, and, instead, speaks of a multiplicity of ‘Islams’, such as
‘Arab Islam’, ‘Indonesian Islam’, ‘Indian Islam’ and so forth. In
advocating an ‘Indian Islam’ he stresses what he describes as a
‘composite culture’ shared by Indians of different faiths. This
appeal for a ‘composite’ Indian culture leads him on to a form of
syncretism and relativism that appears to deny the autonomy of
each religion in a very fundamental sense.
Thus, for instance, he approvingly cites such
instances of ‘composite culture’ as a Muslim saint’s devotion to
Krishna, a Muslim who officiates as a priest in a Hindu temple,
and the Meo Muslims of northern India whom he celebrates as the
‘best example’ of composite culture’, being, he says, ‘part Hindu
and part Muslim’. Elsewhere, he refers to his wife as a model in
this regard, who would worship in mosques, temples and churches,
believing that ‘God was equally present in all the religions’.
For Engineer, inter-faith dialogue is an urgent
necessity, not simply because the Qur’an mandates it, but also in
order to actively promote peace in a society that continues to
witness unrelenting violence between people of different faiths.
As Engineer sees it, Islam encourages its followers to actively
struggle to promote peaceful relations with people of other
faiths. One of Engineer’s major concerns, therefore, has been to
promote an Islamic theology of peace. He argues that peace is a
central tenet of Islam, and points out that the one of the
meanings of the word ‘Islam’ is ‘peace’. Peaceful relations, he
says, are seen as the norm in Islam, and Muslims must work to
establish peace in society and in the relations between different
religious communities.
In addressing the question of peace in Islam he
pays particular attention to the notion of jihad. Grappling with
verses in the Qur’an that refer to jihad, he writes that the term
refers to any form of struggle for the sake of God, in particular
for upholding what he sees are the cardinal values of the Qur’an:
peace, justice and equality. To struggle through peaceful means
for establishing social justice and social equality is thus one of
the highest forms of jihad. He makes a crucial distinction
between jihad as any form of struggle to implement God’s Will, on
the one hand, and qital, or the use of physical force, including
violence. It is true that the Qur’an does not advocate complete
non-violence, he says, but it considers it as a weapon to be used
only in self-defence and not for aggression. Further, it is to be
resorted to only when all peaceful means for defending oneself
have been tried and have failed.
Even here, strict conditions are to be observed,
and innocent non-Muslims cannot, under any circumstances, be
attacked. Engineer concedes, however, that the roots of conflict
in many cases have little to do with religion per se or with
differences of religion. In large parts of the Muslim world, he
writes, economic inequalities and political authoritarianism,
combined with various economic, political and cultural policies of
Western powers, have bred a situation conducive to violence. To
preach peace and harmony in such a situation can only help promote
the oppressive status quo that would, in turn, engender even more
violence. Efforts for establishing peace, Engineer argues, must go
hand in hand with the quest for social justice if peace is to be
indeed long lasting and firmly rooted.
Islam and Secularism
In formulating a theology of Islam suited to the contemporary
Indian context, Engineer deals at length with the debate on the
relation between Islam and politics, in particular with the notion
of the Islamic state. Engineer argues that the Qur’an contains no
mandate or blueprint for an Islamic state, for its main concern is
not with the state but, rather, with society. It speaks, he says,
of an ‘ideal society’, and not of an ‘ideal polity’. The Prophet
Muhammad was not commissioned by God to establish a state,
although he did so in Medina. To insist on an Islamic state,
either, as in India, where Muslims are a minority, or in
Muslim-majority countries, is thus against the Divine Will, for
the historical shari’ah, the corpus of law that Islamists see the
‘Islamic state’ as charged with implementing, has little or no
relevance in today’s age, having been formulated in a completely
different context.
This does not, however, mean that Islam has nothing
to say about politics. Engineer argues that although the forms of
the state might, and indeed, must, change over time, the political
structures that are devised must be infused with justice,
benevolence and equality, fundamental Islamic values. Thus, what
is important is not the form that the state takes, but, rather,
its foundational values. Indeed, Engineer points out, neither the
Qur’an nor the early history of Muslims provides any model for the
form of the polity. The four ‘righteous’ caliphs of the Sunnis
were chosen in different ways, and hardly thirty years after the
Prophet’s death the ‘democratic’ caliphate was transformed into a
hereditary monarchy. Hence, since there is no such thing as the
‘Islamic’ form of the polity, Engineer asserts that the task
before for Muslims today is to work towards developing new
political structures that can best express the core Islamic
values. He believes that these values are best served today by the
modern, secular democratic state.
Secularism and democracy have been seen by some
Muslims as antagonistic to Islam. For them, secularism is
regarded as the negation of religion, if not outright hostility
to it. Likewise, democracy is seen as usurping God’s right and
prerogative to rule by replacing the shari’ah with humanly devised
laws. Engineer seeks to rebut this argument, insisting that the
historical shari’ah is itself largely a human creation, and cannot
be said to represent God’s Will for all times. In Engineer’s own
reading of Islam, secularism and democracy, in fact, truly
represent the Divine Will. His understanding of secularism is
based not on hostility to religion, but, rather, on mutual respect
for all religions. A secular state is one that, while not against
religion as such, is neutral vis-à-vis the various religions. He
contends that such a state is not a novel one for Muslims, for the
polity established by the Prophet Muhammad in Medina did envisage
equal rights for people of all faiths, including Muslims, Jews as
well as pagan Arabs. Each of them was granted full religious
freedom, including the right to be ruled according to their own
personal laws in internal matters. Hence, he argues, Muslims can,
indeed, must, be willing citizens of a secular, plural state that
guarantees the freedom of religion and equality to all its
members. In the specific Indian context, this means that they must
reconcile themselves to being citizens of what is, at least in
theory, a secular state.
Likewise, Engineer seeks to argue that democracy is
not only not foreign to Islam, but actually contained in it. He
draws parallels between democracy and the Islamic notion of shur’a
or rule through consultation, and argues that while the form that
consultation took in the period of the Prophet may not be
replicable today, its fundamental spirit, based on opposition to
authoritarianism, is of continuing relevance. He contends that in
the present age the most appropriate form that shur’a is political
democracy, which, while it differs in form from the shur’a
practiced by the Prophet and the early Muslims, preserves and
promotes its fundamental values and spirit.
Thus, for both Muslim majority countries as well as
countries where Muslims are a minority, the most Islamically
acceptable form of the polity in today’s context would be a
secular, democratic state wherein all religious groups are granted
equal rights and freedoms, and governed according to laws made by
the representatives of the people. The scope of the historical
shari’ah in this scheme of things is strictly limited, at most
being of relevance only in the personal sphere, though even here
radical reforms are called for. The entire sphere of the mu’amilat
or ‘worldly affairs’ is taken out of the purview of Islamic
jurisprudence, as the fiqh formulations in these matters are seen
as either limited to the time of the Prophet or else a reflection
and outcome of an outdated, ‘feudal’ understanding of Islam. In
the place of the laws of the historical shari’ah on matters
related to the mu’amilat, the state must formulate new laws that
may well depart from traditional shari’ prescriptions but that
would be in accordance with the fundamental values of the Qur’an.
Since, effectively, the scope of the shari’ah is restricted to the
private sphere, the secular, democratic state is able to legislate
on matters that traditional ‘ulama as well as Islamists consider
as having already been covered by God’s laws.
What, then, of nationalism and notions of national
identity? Engineer contends that nations are a product of shared
culture, history and locality. Religion alone cannot be the basis
for national identity. The Muslim ummah then is purely a religious
unity and not a political community that includes all Muslims.
The treaty of Medina between the Prophet and the Jews and pagan
Arabs of Medina defined all of them as members of one single ummah,
the denizens of Medina. This clearly suggests, Engineer argues,
that nationality is not determined by religion. Hence, projects to
create a pan-Islamic polity based on the notion of the Muslim
ummah as a political unit are not only impractical, but, in fact,
contrary to the practice of the Prophet. Since nationality is thus
seen as based on shared locality and culture, Muslims can, indeed,
must, willingly accept the fact that they belong to different
nationalities and that in most cases, as in India, they share
their nationality with people of other faiths.
Engineer’s Hermeneutical Approach: A Critique
Engineer’s understanding of the Qur’an as divine revelation is
premised on the distinction that he draws between the essential
value system of the text, on the one hand, and the legal
pronouncements contained in the text that he sees as context
specific, on the other. While the former are said to be of eternal
relevance, and hence to represent the essence of the Qur’an, the
latter are seen to be rooted in the specific context of seventh
century Arabia and, thus, not necessarily valid for all times to
come. Any religion, Engineer argues, must operate in a given
context, and, accepting many of the institutions and practices of
that context, must seek to modify or transcend them gradually.
Hence, for instance, the pronouncements of the Qur’an on women or
slavery are to be seen in relation to the context in which the
divine text was revealed. Although patriarchy and slavery are seen
as going against God’s plan for the world, the Qur’an had to
accept them as they were deeply rooted in the context of the
society in which it was revealed. Yet, this was no passive
acceptance or whole-hearted legitimation. Rather, the Qur’an tried
to modify the harshness of these institutions, and its essential
value system, Engineer argues, clearly suggests that God wills
that they should be gradually done away with over time. Using this
contextual approach to understanding the Qur’an, Engineer attempts
to fashion a new way of interpreting the text, which he sees as
relevant for our times.
Engineer’s hermeneutical project emerges from his
own involvement in groups struggling for social change, and the
essential values that he discovers as being the core of the Qur’an
are precisely the values that he seeks to promote in the course of
his social intervention: peace, justice, compassion and equality.
This reading of core values into the Qur’an is, while not
completely arbitrary, determined essentially by Engineer’s own
politics. It is quite conceivable that other Muslims, pursuing
other political agendas, could construct a completely different
set of core values and read them into the Qur’an, values such as
militancy, power and domination. Although Engineer does admit that
multiple readings of the text are not just possible but, indeed,
inevitable, he implicitly suggests that his own reading of the
text is normative. At the same time, he fails to seriously grapple
with the claims of other Muslims who might offer radically
different readings based on a different set of values that they
see as underlying the Qur’anic text. In the ultimate analysis, all
readings are arbitrary then, human products that cannot claim to
represent the Divine Will in its entirety, and this applies to
Engineer’s own understanding of the divine revelation as well.
The distinction that Engineer draws between what is
normative in the Qur’an, and hence, of lasting relevance, and what
is contextual and thus limited in its application, is a product of
the purposes for which he seeks to invoke the text. Hence, aspects
of the text that are seen as militating against his own project
are treated as purely contextual, to be treated as limited in
their application to seventh century Arabia, while others, which
are seen as positively legitimating his agenda, are deemed as
normative and as of eternal significance. Here again, no strict
rules are applied, and the sifting between the normative and the
contextual appears somewhat arbitrary. The struggle for social
justice, peace and harmony, Engineer’s principal concerns, thus
determines how he reads the Qur’an, rather than the other way
round. However, as Engineer’s principal purpose is to develop a
contextual understanding of the Qur’an, this is inevitable, for
the manner in which the both the context and the political project
are defined inevitably influences how the text is read.
The dialectical tension between text and context,
and the problem of reading into the text understandings that
emerge from an external agenda are well illustrated in Engineer’s
examination of the issues of religious pluralism and secular
nationalism. Thus, Engineer argues that the Qur’an itself lays
down that God has sent prophets to all peoples , and that all of
them have taught the same basic religion, the din, al-Islam or the
‘religion of submission [to the one God]’. Hence, he says, Muslims
must respect all religions and not consider their own as
inherently superior. Since one of his principal concerns is to
promote better relations between Muslims and people of other
faiths, he conveniently glosses over those verses in the Qur’an
that admonish Christians, Jews and others for having distorted the
teachings of the prophets that had been sent to them. By thus
remaining silent on the Qur’anic notion of tahrif or the
‘corruption’ of the scriptures of the pre-Muhammadan prophets by
those who claim to be their followers, he seems to argue that
these scripturalist traditions as they exist today remain in their
pristine purity, as revealed to their prophets, and that, hence,
Muslims must regards them as true, which is a notion not many
Muslims would agree with.
This selective reading of the Qur’an leads to a
relativism that effectively denies the autonomy and integrity of
each religious tradition. As Samuel remarks, it works to ‘reduce
the importance of the truth claims of one’s own tradition for its
adherents’, these being dismissed by Engineer as a product of
‘egoism’. Rather than recognizing these competing truth claims and
the very real differences between the various religions, Engineer
either ignores them or else relativises them. Samuel rightly
comments that this way of attempting to promote inter-faith
harmony seems ‘shallow’. If all the historical religions (as
opposed to the primal din, which, as the Qur’an sees it, was
taught by all the prophets) are true, then what remains of the
Muslim claim that Islam represents a greater degree of truth or,
indeed, the absolute truth? By identifying a set of common value
orientations that all religions are seen to share as the root of
religion, and by divorcing salvation from dogma, religious belief
is thus ultimately rendered immaterial in God’s eyes. Hence,
Engineer is led to suggest that ‘Paradise is not the monopoly of
any religious group whatever. Whoever submits himself entirely to
Allah and is a doer of good, he has his reward in heaven’.
Further, by claiming that what is essential to religion are the
core values, which all religions seem to share, and that the forms
in which these values have been expressed, the various shar’iahs,
are contextual, and, therefore, malleable and dispensable or
ultimately irrelevant in God’s eyes, all religions are sought to
be steamrolled into one, and syncretism is accorded a positive
value. By limiting the essenctial core of the Qur’an to faith in
God and commitments to a set of basic values, the rest of the
Qur’an and the Islamic scripturalist tradition is treated,
effectively, as of little or no ultimate concern. Islam thus gets
reduced to a value orientation and a system of rituals, although
even the latter is seen as part of the historical shari’ah, with
little or no ultimate value in itself.
Not only does this approach to Islam question the
specificity and autonomy of Islam, as many Muslims appear to
understand the religion, it also does scant justice to the way in
which other religions see themselves. Thus, other religions, too,
are reduced, at root, to a set of values that they are seen as
sharing in common with each other and with Islam. This is well
illustrated in Engineer’s examination of Hinduism, which amounts
to a personal redefinition of Hinduism that differs markedly from
the way in which many Hindus would understand their own faith.
Indeed, he engages in a process of construction of a form of
Hinduism that bears little resemblance to the historical forms
that it has adopted, in order to stress what he regards as the
common teachings of Hinduism and Islam. Thus, for instance, he
argues that since the Qur’an states that prophets have been sent
by God to every community, it is possible that figures such as
Rama and Krishna were indeed prophets and that the Vedas are a
revealed scripture, which Muslims, too must accept. He ignores,
however, the very different notion of revelation in Hinduism and
Islam and indeed of the role of scripture in both traditions,
while also eliding the question of tahrif in the Vedas if they are
indeed to be treated divinely revealed texts by Muslims. In
constructing a notion of Hinduism that appears to share much in
common with Islam, justice is hardly done to the actual forms that
Hinduism has taken, particularly in its Brahminical varieties,
that seem clearly to militate against the values of justice and
equality that Engineer sees as fundamental to all true religion.
In his analysis of the relation between Islam and
politics, likewise, Engineer’s commitment to secularism and
democracy determines his own reading of the Qur’an and the
Prophetic example. He pays scant attention to the role and status
of the Prophet as the actual head of the state of Medina, and by
focusing, instead, on the content of the treaty of Medina and the
reciprocal rights that it granted to all communities, is able to
gloss over the fact that the constitution of the Medinan state was
itself premised on the de facto and de jure rule of the Prophet
himself. Thus, he insists that the Prophet ‘never aspired for
political power’, while conveniently ignoring the role of the
Prophet as the head of the political community of Medina.
Similarly, his invoking the principle of shu’ra to legitimize
political democracy is also inspired by his own politics, and does
not emanate directly from the Prophetic example itself, for
although the Qur’an advised the Prophet to consult his followers,
he was not bound by their advice. Likewise, in order to provide
‘Islamic’ sanction to political democracy he reduces Islam to a
set of values, and restricts the application of Islamic law to the
personal sphere, paying scant regard to the concept of law in
early Muslim history.
In short, then, it appears that Engineer’s own
theology of Islam is determined, above all, by considerations that
emanate from outside the Qur’anic text, and, in several crucial
respects, bears little relation to the ways in which Islam has
been understood by Muslims throughout history. His understanding
of Islam is indelibly shaped by his concern for social justice and
inter-communal harmony, of course. But in thus allowing his
Qur’anic exegisis to be moulded by ‘extra-textual’ concerns he is
hardly novel, for there can be no politically neutral
interpretation of a text, although many, if not most, interpreters
of sacred textual traditions would imagine themselves free from
the influences of their own social location.
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