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Your letters - posted August 26, 2007

Posted in Q & A on Aug 26, 2007

At President Clinton’s School of Public Service, Irshad speaks about Project Ijtihad, the mission to revive critical thinking in Islam. Read and debate Irshad’s latest column about ijtihad, featured by Newsweek and the Washingtonpost.com. (Photo: Russell Powell/Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
 

Posted August 26, 2007

This will be my final update on irshadmanji.com. I’m about to launch my new site, www.irshadmanji.com, which will stand for Muslim reform and moral courage rather than merely against all that troubles Islam today. I’ll also be blogging, posting more free-of-charge translations to defy the censors, and making it easier to use and distribute my content wherever you are in this world.

The one thing that won’t change is my passion to reconcile religion with reason. In that spirit, enjoy my exchange below with a reform-minded Muslim. You see? I’m not alone. Neither are you!

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“Irshad, do you think there should be latitude in the Muslim community for people whose personal theology is drastically different from traditional Islamic theology? For example, if someone doesn’t believe in God at all, or isn’t sure whether there is a God, or questions whether the Qur’an was a revealed text, but they still identify with aspects of Islamic culture and want to participate in the collective life of the Muslim community, is there ever a point where they shouldn’t be allowed to call themselves Muslims?I think that moving away from religious labels as sectarian dividers for ‘in’ groups and ‘out’ groups, and toward a more fluid view that allows for overlapping boundaries, is a good thing.” - Nizam, Chicago

Irshad replies: You know why I love your question, Nizam? Because it answers the common — and lazy — assumption that if you want to be part of the Muslim community then you have to sacrifice your individuality. You’ve just pointed out that none of us stops being an individual simply by belonging to groups. Moreover, in wanting to think for ourselves as Muslims, we’re not abandoning the community of Islam but seeking the choice express ourselves authentically within that community. In other words, it’s not about leaving. It’s about staying — with integrity.Now here’s my question to you: Is religion a club by whose rules one must play in order to stay? And if it is, when does religion stop being faith and start becoming dogma?

Nizam replies: “I think you’ve just cut to the core with that question.  Religions have functioned as clubs for much of history.  This has seemingly been the raison d’etre of religion in contexts like the Crusades, when the founding principles and higher ethics of a belief get tossed out the window and people focus solely on teaming up with their own club members to fight the ‘other club.’ (The al-Qaeda agenda definitely bears these characteristics.)

In this vein, I see the reformist agenda as more than just reforming practices in Islam, and more than even reforming the way we approach questions of interpretation and reinterpretation (ijtihad).  It means re-thinking the very role and function of religion in society.  The outdated vision of Islam as an exclusive club with static boundaries and permissible discrimination against non-members is something that we should be able to discard as readily as we’ve discarded slavery, homophobia and misogyny.

In its place, I would envision an Islam that is free of the petty divisions between Sunni and Shia, Hanafi and Shafii, Ismaili, Wahhabi, Sufi — and even between Muslim and non-Muslim.  If we’re no longer in the mindset of who is a True Muslim and who is a heretic, then labels become simply descriptors and not marks of division.  Which means that by fighting for a democratic approach to ijtihad, we are by extension fighting to transform Islam from a dogmatic club into a community of spiritually minded, elevated souls capable of spreading peace and justice because labels diminish in importance. This is a point I attribute to Gandhi.”

Irshad replies: I can just imagine all the people reading your comments and scoffing at the ‘fantasy’ you’ve described.  But you’re wise, Nizam.  Because Gandhi had a lesser-known friend, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who defied the mullahs and inspired 100,000 Muslim warriors to lay down their arms and take up a peaceful, service-oriented approach to reforming Indian society! So to hell with cynicism.  I think you’re on to something.The big problem I see with reforming Muslims is that the mainstream constantly accuses us of diluting Islam to mean nothing — just as reform Jews supposedly have no real connection to the Torah or Unitarian Universalists sometimes avoid mentioning Christ in their services.  In other words, you and I think we’re being pluralists but our critics tell us we’re relativists: people who fall for anything because they stand for nothing. I firmly disagree that we stand for nothing.  Human rights are not nothing.  Freedom of conscience is not nothing.  Education as a substitute for indoctrination is not nothing.  But these principles transcend Islam.  When we advocate them, we beg the question: What do we stand for that makes us Muslims at all?Here’s an email I received just today. It perfectly illustrates my question for you (and makes me wonder why this guy lives in America if he hates American values so much):

“I am a conservative Muslim living in the States. I happened to catch you on TV and was quite appalled. It’s not you I hate. It’s the West that prides itself on making you the representative of change in Islam. You. A GAY feminist who wants to change Islam to favor Western weaknesses. And boy do they love you. I’m sure the West was salivating when you appeared in the limelight. Finally they have a Muslim sell-out who is willing to twist and turn Islam to a watered-down version of every other religion practiced in the West… You are just a tool from the Kuffar trying to kill the essence of Islam.” - Amran

Nizam replies to Irshad: “Amran’s email is problematic from top to bottom.  The core of the problem seems to me that he’s entirely oppositional in his thinking — Islam has to be defined by reference to its opposite.  And to a lot of Muslims, that opposite is the West. His message is entirely devoid of any affirmative statement about what Islam is, because he is only able to rail against what Islam is not (according to him).

Now to your question, ‘What do we stand for that makes us Muslim?’  The key is deciding what we mean by ‘Muslim.’  Do we mean an adherent to a particular religion? A member of a particular social, cultural and demographic group? A follower of a particular school of legal theory? (I think this is how Amran sees it.)  Or do we mean a submitter — one who, in his/her worldly affairs, is concerned less with ego, status and membership in a club and more concerned with justice, equity, tolerance and mercy to all of the creatures of the world because those are the values of spiritual enlightenment?

If the answer is the latter, then a struggle to reform the outward practice and legalities of Islam need not mean breaking a connection to the faith.  If anything, it would mean strengthening it…”