Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (12 page)

Most Muslim nations experienced the wholesale borrowing of civil law concepts. Instead of the dialectical and indeterminate methodology of

traditional Islamic jurisprudence, Muslim nations opted for more centralized, determinative, and often code based systems of law.
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These developments only contributed to the power of the state, which had become extremely meddlesome, and which was now capable of a level of centralization that was inconceivable just two centuries ago. Even Muslim modernists who attempted to reform Islamic jurisprudence were heavily influenced by the civil law system, and thus sought to resist the indeterminate fluidity of Islamic law and increase its unitary and centralized character. Not only were the concepts of law heavily influenced by the European legal tradition, but even the ideologies of resistance employed by Muslims were laden with Third World notions of national liberation and self determination. For instance, modern nationalistic thought exercised a greater influence on the resistance ideologies of Muslim and Arab national liberation movements than anything in the Islamic tradition. The Islamic tradition was re- constructed to fit Third World nationalistic ideologies of anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, rather than the other way around.

The disintegration of the traditional institutions of Islamic learning and authority meant a descent into a condition of virtual anarchy, particularly with respect to the mechanisms of defining Islamic authenticity. It was not so much that no one could authoritatively speak for Islam, but that virtually every Muslim was suddenly considered to possess the requisite qualifications to become a representative and spokesperson for the Islamic tradition, and even
Shari‘ah
law.
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This was primarily because the standards were set so low that a person who had a modest degree of knowledge of the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet was considered sufficiently qualified to authoritatively represent the Shari‘ah, even if such a person was not familiar with the precedents and discourses of the interpretive communities of the past.
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Consequently, persons, mostly engineers, medical doctors, and physical scientists, who were primarily self-taught and whose knowledge of Islamic text and history was quite superficial were able to position themselves as authorities on Islamic law and theology. Islamic law and theology became the extracurricular hobby of pamphlet readers and writers. As such, Islamic intellectual culture witnessed an unprecedented level of deterioration, as self-proclaimed and self-taught experts reduced the Islamic heritage to the least common denominator, which often amounted to engaging in crass generalizations about the nature of Islam, and the nature of the non-Muslim “other.”
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Clinging to vulgar apologetics, the point of the self- proclaimed experts was to increase the Islamic tradition’s mass appeal by transforming it into a vehicle for displays of power symbolisms. These power symbolisms were motivated by the desire to overcome a pervasive sense of powerlessness and to express resistance to Western hegemony in the contemporary age, as well as a means of voicing national aspirations for political, social, and cultural independence. The irony, however, was that these self-proclaimed experts, being primarily medical doctors, engineers, or computer scientists, were trained only in Western scientific methods and according to Western invented

educational curricula, and therefore, methodologically and epistemologically, they were effectively a part of Western culture. Although defiant and rebellious, in every way, they were the children of the West, despite the power symbolisms of resistance in which they engaged.
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Most significantly, as they searched Islam for black-and-white and definitive answers to all their socio-political problems, these Muslim activists superimposed the logic of empirical precision and the determinism of Western scientific methods upon the Islamic intellectual, and particularly the juristic, tradition.
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With the deconstruction of the traditional institutions of religious authority

emerged organizations such as the Jihad, Tanzim, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban, who were influenced by the resistance paradigms of national liberation and anti-colonialist ideologies, but who also anchored themselves in a religious orientation that is distinctively puritan, supremacist, and thoroughly opportu- nistic in nature. This theology is the byproduct of the emergence and eventual primacy of a synchronistic orientation that unites Wahhabism and Salafism in modern Islam. Puritan orientations, such as Wahhabism, imagine that God’s perfection and immutability are fully attainable by human beings in this lifetime. It is as if God’s perfection had been deposited in the Divine law, and by giving effect to this law, it is possible to create a social order that mirrors the Divine Truth. But by associating themselves with the Supreme Being in this fashion, puritan groups are able to claim a self-righteous perfectionism that easily slips into a pretense of supremacy. The existence of this puritan orientation in Islam is hardly surprising. All religious systems have suffered at one time or another from absolutist extremism, and Islam is not an exception. Within the first century of Islam, religious extremists known as the Khawarij (literally, the secessionists) slaughtered a large number of Muslims and non-Muslims, and were even responsible for the assassination of the Prophet’s cousin and Companion the Caliph ‘Ali b. Abi Talib. The descendants of the Khawarij exist today in Oman and Algeria, but after centuries of bloodshed, they have become moderates, if not pacifists. Other than the Khawarij, there were other extremists such as the Qaramitah and Assassins, whose terror became the
raison d’eˆtre
for their very existence, and who earned unmitigated infamy in the writings of Muslim historians, theologians, and jurists. Again, after centuries of bloodshed, these two groups learned moderation, and they continue to exist in small numbers in North Africa and Iraq. The essential lesson taught by Islamic history is that extremist groups, such as those mentioned above and others, are ejected from the mainstream of Islam; they are marginalized, and they eventually come to be treated as a heretical aberration from the Islamic message. The problem, however, as noted earlier, is that the traditional institutions of Islam that historically acted to marginalize extremist creeds no longer exist. This is what makes this period of Islamic history far more troublesome than any other, and this is also what makes modern puritan orientations far more threatening to the integrity of the morality and values of Islam than any of the previous extremist

movements. Extreme acts of ugliness today represent the culmination of a process that has been in the making for the past two centuries. In the same fashion, the culmination of Salafism, Wahhabism, apologetics, and Islamic nationalisms has become a synchronism that could be called Salafabism.

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The story of modern puritanical Islam must start with the Saudi movement known as Wahhabism. It is impossible to quantify the exact amount of influence that Wahhabism has had on modern Muslim thinking. However, it is notable that Islamist groups, such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, that have achieved a degree of international infamy, usually, have been heavily influenced by Wahhabi thought. Particularly on the issue of women, Wahhabis tend to espouse some of the most patriarchical and exclusionary orientations within contemporary Islam. Furthermore, in countries that have attempted to implement Islamic law, one notices that such efforts at implementation tend to be heavily influenced by Wahhabi paradigms and systems of thought. This is so, even in countries that are predominately Hanafi, such as Pakistan, or predominately Maliki, such as Nigeria. Finally, many of the theological paradigms of Wahhabism, such as anti- rationalism, the rejection of the doctrine of intercession, the reliance on isolated
hadith
in the deduction of laws, the prohibition of music, or the mechanics of prayer have become part of the pervasive system of belief adopted by a wide variety of Sunni Islamic movements. One even finds that the pedantic doctrines adopted by Wahhabis, such as whether it is permissible to use prayer beads, whether one may wipe one’s neck during the ablutions before prayer, or whether women may attend funeral services, have become widespread in various parts of the Muslim world. Part of what accounts for the Wahhabi influence in the Muslim world is Saudi Arabia’s unique position as the guardian of the two holy sites of Mecca and Medina. Through the regulation of orthodoxy at pilgrimage, Wahhabis have an opportunity to influence the way Islam is practiced around the world. In addition, Wahhabism is supported by the substantial financial resources of the Saudi government.

The foundations of Wahhabi theology were set into place by the eighteenth- century evangelist Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1206/1792). With a puritanical zeal, ‘Abd al-Wahhab sought to rid Islam of all the corruptions that he believed had crept into the religion – corruptions that included mysticism, including the doctrine of intercession, and rationalism. Wahhabism resisted the indeterminacy of the modern age by escaping to a strict literalism in which the text became the sole source of legitimacy. Wahhabism exhibited extreme hostility to all forms of intellectualism, mysticism, and any sectarianism within Islam, considering all of these to be corrupt innovations that had crept into the religion because of un-Islamic influences. The Wahhabi creed also considered any form of moral thought that was not entirely dependent on the text as a form

of self-idolatry, and treated humanistic fi of knowledge, especially philosophy, as “the sciences of the devil.”
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According to the Wahhabi creed, it was imperative to return to a presumed pristine, simple, and straightforward Islam, which was believed to be entirely reclaimable by a literal implementation of the commands and precedents of the Prophet, and by a strict adherence to correct ritual practice. Wahhabism also rejected any attempt to interpret the Divine law from a historical, contextual perspective, and, in fact, treated the vast majority of Islamic history as a corruption or aberration from the true and authentic Islam.
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The dialectical and indeterminate hermeneutics of the classical jurisprudential tradition were considered corruptions of the purity of the faith and law. Furthermore, Wahhabism became very intolerant of the long- established Islamic practice of considering a variety of schools of thought to be equally orthodox, and attempted to narrow considerably the range of issues upon which Muslims may legitimately disagree. Orthodoxy was narrowly defined, and ‘Abd al-Wahhab, himself, was fond of creating long lists of beliefs and acts that he considered hypocritical and the adoption or commission of which would immediately render a Muslim an unbeliever.
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‘Abd al-Wahhab had a near obsessive concern with the doctrine of
shirk
(associating partners with God). For him, a practicing Muslim could commit particular acts that would expose the impurity of his belief in God and Islam. Such acts, according to ‘Abd al-Wahhab, betray a willingness to engage in
shirk
, and thus would result in taking a person out of the fold of Islam. In his writings, he consistently emphasized that there is no middle of the road for a Muslim – either a Muslim was a true believer or not, and if a Muslim was not a true believer ‘Abd al-Wahhab had no qualms about declaring a Muslim to be an infidel and treating him or her as such.
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But other than the practice of
takfir
(accusing Muslims of heresy and of being infidels), perhaps the most stultifying, and even deadly, characteristic of Wahhabism was its hostility to any human practice that would excite the imagination or bolster creativity. According to the Wahhabis, only frivolous people would be fond of the arts, such as music or poetry. In fact, according to them, any act that excites the imagination or augments individual creativity constitutes a step towards
kufr
(becoming an infidel) because it is bound to lead to heretical thoughts.
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Therefore, even poetry written in praise of the Prophet is reprehensible if it indulges in exaggerations and excessive imagery.
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‘Abd al-Wahhab was rabidly hostile towards non-Muslims as well, insisting that a Muslim should adopt none of the customs of non-Muslims, and should not befriend them either. He argued that it was entirely immaterial what a non- Muslim might think about Muslim practices, and in fact it was a sign of spiritual weakness to care about whether non-Muslims were impressed by Muslim behavior or not.
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Effectively, ‘Abd al-Wahhab espoused a self-sufficient and closed system of belief that has no reason to engage or interact with the other, except from a position of dominance. Rather tellingly, ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s orientation does not

materially differ from the approach adopted by later Muslim groups concerning the irrelevance of universal moral values to the Islamic mission. This insularism and moral isolationism, clearly manifested in the writings of ‘Abd al-Wahhab, was powerfully reproduced by ideologues of subsequent Islamic movements.
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However, ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s primary concern was not with non-Muslims, but with purportedly corrupt Muslims, among which he included the Ottoman Turks. In this sense, as in later puritan movements, there was a strong political and nationalistic component to ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s thought. He described the Turks as the moral equivalents of the Mongols who invaded Muslim territories and then converted to Islam in name only. Therefore, the Ottoman Turks were treated as the primary enemy of Islam because, according to ‘Abd al-Wahhab, they exercised a corrupting influence upon the religion.
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Importantly, ‘Abd al-Wahhab argued that Muslims who engage in acts of
shirk
must be fought and killed, and interpreted precedents set by the first Rightly Guided Caliph, Abu Bakr, in support of the argument that although people might hold themselves as Muslims, they could, and should, be killed as hypocrites.
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In addition, ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and his followers, engaged in rhetorical tirades against prominent medieval and contemporaneous jurists who they considered heretical, and even ordered the execution or assassination of a large number of jurists with whom they disagreed.
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According to ‘Abd al-Wahhab, and his followers, the juristic tradition, save a few jurists such as Ibn Taymiyya whom they held in high esteem, was largely corrupt, and deference to the well-established schools of jurisprudential thought or even to contemporaneous jurists was an act of heresy.
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Among the medieval jurists that the Wahhabis explicitly condemned as
kuffar
(infidels) were prominent scholars such as Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 606/1210), Abu Sa‘id al-Baydawi (d. 710/1310), Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati (d. 745/1344), al-Khazin (d. 741/1341), Muhammad al-Balkhi (d. 830/1426), Shihab al-Din al-Qastalani (d. 923/1517), Abu Sa‘ud al-‘Imadi, (d. 982/1574), and many others. The characteristic common to these jurists was that, as far as textual interpretation was concerned, they were not strict literalists. In addition, some of these scholars were suspected of harboring Shi‘i sympathies, or had integrated rationalist methods of analysis into their interpretive approaches.
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