1. Upsetting the Applecart

“What is happiness? Do humans beings have a purpose? What is the meaning of life? Such questions are truly perennial; they have been asked for perhaps as long as human beings have been able to ask anything, and no doubt they will continue to be asked for just as long again.”[1]

For some, the question about life’s meaning has itself lost all meaning. Most people, though, at one or another point in their lives, have had occasion to ask such questions; some to even reflect deeply over their implications. For Man, in the words of Jonathan Sacks, “is a meaning-seeking animal”[2] and “Our fundamental questions are Who am I? and To which narrative do I belong?”[3] No doubt, the instinctive urge to ask the ‘big questions’ may be dulled by hedonistic pursuits and material comforts, but nothing can entirely surpress it. For its echo continues to reverberate in the deepest recesses of the human soul. In fact, “The search for God,” says Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, “is a broadly shared attribute of all humankind, across geographic areas and throughout human history.”[4]

The Qur’an tells us that life is essentially teleological: that is to say, it has purpose. Human beings are not mere products of random chance or selfish genes. Instead, our existence is intended. This is expressed in the conviction that God created creation with a purpose and has a plan for its future: We created not the heavens and the earth and all that is between them in vain, proclaims the Qur’an.[5]

Traditional notions of Man’s place in the cosmos have though, over the past four centuries or so, taken a considerable pounding from some of the revelations of science. The late sixteenth century witnessed science displace the earth from the centre of the universe and assign to it a less grandiose place orbiting around our Sun. Later we would learn that the earth itself – possibly five billion years old – is a tiny planet, close to the edge of a small galaxy, in a universe made-up of billions of other galaxies; each containing over a hundred billion stars and, presumably, planets. For those whose worldview committed them to a geocentric universe, where the earth was at the significant center and purpose of all things, these assertions came as a devastating shock. With the new scientific paradigm it was becoming a clear case of what Shakespeare’s Hamlet intuits: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

A more serious challenge to religion came at the end of the nineteenth century when Darwin published his Origin of Species. Its significance was not so much its proposal that species evolved and adapted (this notion had been around for a while), but for suggesting a mechanism by which this happened without there being a need for a Creator-God: Evolution via Natural Selection. Horatio’s philosophy would never be quite the same again!

2. The Darwinian Genesis

Darwin’s epic, with some modern tweaks and realignments, essentially goes something like this: Life on earth seems to have emerged about three billion years ago when a cocktail of simple chemicals combined to form more complex ones. This mixing took place in the seas of the early Earth, which are often referred to as the ‘primordial soup’. Some injection of energy was needed to spark-off a reaction between these molecules. This, it is suggested, may have come from lightning storms or from hot underwater springs. These molecules then joined together to form more complex ones, called ‘amino acids’, which, in turn, went on to form proteins – the building blocks of all living creatures. Another complex molecule formed in these reactions was DNA, which has two traits that make it essential for life to exist. It carries all the information to make a living creature, and it can also replicate itself. Over millions of years this cocktail of molecules evolved into bacteria; thought to be the earliest ancestors of all life on our planet today.

This is where Darwin’s natural selection comes into play. Through this mechanism living organisms, over long periods of time, evolve certain traits which allow them to better adapt to their environment. In other words, these traits are ‘selected’ by ‘nature,’ giving certain organisms a survival advantage over others. These traits are then passed on to the next generation, thus increasing their chances of survival. Those not having an advantage, or unable to pass it on, don’t survive. Sometimes, through nothing more than random chance, a genetic mutation occurs in an organism by which it acquires an advantage trait.

Through natural selection and gene mutation organisms can both adapt as a species and evolve into different species. Single-cell life in Earth’s ancient waters evolved into worms and jelly fish via this process about 700 million years ago; dinosaurs arrived around 225 million years ago; and their reign came to a sudden end about 65 million years ago. Fossil records suggest that our early human like ancestors only branched-off from chimpanzees a mere 5 million years in the past and that humans are a relatively recent appearance: anywhere from around 100,000 to 35,000 years ago. For many people today, evolution through natural selection and genetic transformation has dispensed with the belief that life on our planet – including human life – has a divine origin; let alone a divinely ordained purpose. “The universe we observe,” according to the ardent atheism of Richard Dawkins, “has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”[6]

3. Prayer-Mats and Telescopes

Darwin’s own belief seems somewhat ambiguous. At one time he says about himself: “Agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.” At another time he wrote of being greatly challenged by “the extreme difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as a result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.”[7] This, though, is somewhat beside the point. The theory of evolution has, for the past one hundred and fifty years, been a source of deep discomfort in faith communities and theistic discourses. Godless materialists see in evolution a decisive victory of science over religion; of microscopes over prayer beads; of empirical observations over illuminated hearts. Yet though there is a lot to learn from science and much to thank it for, the atheists’ jubilation is seen by the believer as being premature and their aggressive insistence that belief in God a delusion immature.[8]

Muslims are forever quick to point out that the Qur’an is remarkably free of the scientific inaccuracies encountered in other religious texts and scriptures. Many further point out that the Qur’an is astonishingly in harmony with modern science. It is true some of the faithful have thrown exegetical caution to the wind in their zeal to wed scripture to the scientific cause. Nevertheless, there are significant passages in the Qur’an which seem to so clearly speak to the scientific mind in modern man. Let me illustrate the point with a few such verses:

The Qur’an is silent about the age of the Earth as well as, for that matter, when life first appeared on it; though it does say: And We made from water every living creature.[9] A reference to the primordial soup in the Earth’s early waters perhaps? Another interesting verse has it: We built the heaven with might and it is We who are expanding it.[10] A highly probable pointer to cosmology’s modern tenet that galaxies are moving apart from each other as the universe expands. Lastly, as an example, is the vivid Quranic description of how a human embryo forms in the womb of its mother: We created man from a product of clay. Then We placed him as a drop in a safe lodging. Then We fashioned the drop into a clot of blood that clings, then We fashioned the clinging clot into a chewed-like lump, then We turned the lump into bones, then We clothed the bones with flesh, and then produced it as another creation. So blessed be God, the Best of Creators! [11] What is significant here, as in the other two examples, is that at the time of their revelation these Quranic assertions ran completely counter to the science of the day. In fact, science was only able to discover the truth of these claims within only the last century or so!

One must not be tempted by these verses into thinking that the Qur’an is a text-book on science or a catalogue of scientific facts. These verses are primarily asserting the i‘jaz; the miraculous and inimitable nature of the Qur’an, thereby demonstrating it truly is the Word of God and guidance from Him.

Turner, I think, captured the essence of the matter when he said,

“The Qur’an describes God, the principles of belief and the fate of man in the world to come, but it is no work on theology; it contains accounts of past prophets and faith communities of old, but it is no history book; it contains invocations and words of inspiration; but it is no book of prayer.

“Legal issues are discussed in it, but it is no book of law; it tells us how the Creator fashions the cosmos and makes the world turn, but it is no treatise on cosmology; it describes the alternation of day and night, and the development of the foetus in the womb, but it is no compendium of natural science.

“It examines the heart and mind of man, and the existential dilemma of being human but longing for the divine, yet it is no work on popular psychology.

“It is all of those things and it is none of those things: more than any other book can it truly be said of the enigmatic Qur’an that it is far more than simply the sum of its component parts.”12

4. On Fossils and Theology

This still leaves us with the question: what does Islam have to say about the Theory of Evolution? Any sober religious response to the question must, if it wants to remain true to the scriptural texts, be tethered to the following theological givens:

Firstly, that God’s attributes are beginning-less and endless (qadimatun azaliyyah, da’imatun abadiyyah). Imam al-Tahawi said in his famous creedal tract: “As God was, along with His attributes, in pre-existence, so shall He remain throughout all eternity.”[13] What this implies is that no time elapses except that God as the Creator (al-Khaliq) is creating; as the Bestower (al-Wahhab) is bestowing His gifts; as the All-Merciful (al-Rahman) is administering His mercy; etc. Muslims do not believe as Deists do that God initiated creation and fashioned its laws, but then just left it to pursue its own course. On the contrary, Islam teaches that God is actively involved in creation and is continuously creating. Say: “God is the creator of everything;” [14] even our actions and moments of stillness: God created you, and all that you do.[15]

Secondly, that nothing can happen independently of God’s will. About this, the Tahawiyyah states: “Everything happens by His decree and will, and His will is accomplished. …What He wills for them happens and what He does not will, does not happen.”[16] Nothing is random or fortuitous. Nothing occurs by ‘chance’. Nor do causes or effects have an autonomous independence from the divine will. This is not to say that Islamic theology denies causes and effects as such, rather it denies that causes have effects in and of themselves; for God is the creator of all things.[17] For someone to literally believe that ‘random’ mutation or ‘natural’ selection have a causal independence from the will of God, as most evolutionists do, would be clear disbelief (kufr). The shari‘ah does, though, grant a dispensation to use certain phrases figuratively; like when someone says, ‘the food filled me up’ or ‘the fire burnt me’, providing one does not believe such things to have causal autonomy from God’s will. Expressions such as ‘nature does such and such’ are also, in all probability, included in the above dispensation. To believe in the literalness of such expressions would be to set up a partner with God in terms of His Lordship and actions. In other words, it would be committing shirk in His rububiyyah. Now as for the rule in respect to worldly causes (asbab), it runs as follows: “To rely on worldly caused is shirk in tawhid; to deny their efficacy is deficiency in intellect; and to shun their use is mockery of the shari‘ah.”[18]

Thirdly, Evolution’s piece de resistance: that species are able to evolve into entirely new species over long periods of time, seems not to be at odds with any established tenet of the faith. Most books of theology have sections detailing what is necessary (wajib), possible (mumkin, ja’iz) and impossible (mustahil) with respect to God. The category of the possible refers to all those things that can possibly exist; i.e. whose existence is neither necessary nor impossible.[19] That living organisms can evolve or undergo genetic transformation, by the will of God, is subsumed under the catagory of the possible. Belief in it, provided one not include the creation of Man (dealt with next), nor believe in causal independance, is neither shirk nor kufr. Rather, its correctness depends entirely upon whether or not there is any credible scientific evidence to substantiate the claim.[20]

Fourthly, Darwin’s claim that human beings evolved from a common ancestor; the great apes, in an evolutionary chain which extends back to life in the primordial soup, is incompatible with the Quranic account of Man’s origin. The Qur’an is categorical about the common ancestor of humanity being the Prophet Adam, peace be upon him. When your Lord said to the angels, informs the Qur’an, “I am creating a human being from clay. So when I have fashioned him and breathed into him of My spirit, then fall down before him prostrate.” The angels fell down prostrate, all of them. Except Satan; he was proud and became one of the disbelievers. He said: “O Iblis! What prevents you from prostrating before that which I created with My two hands? Are you too proud, or think you too exalted of yourself?” He said: “I am better than him, You created me of fire while him you created of clay.[21] What the above goes to show is that the creation of the first human being is special, unique and different than all other life forms; even if there are physical and biological similarities with other terrestrial life. For God not only fashioned him, but did so with His two hands, and breathed into him of His spirit. Those learned in Quranic exegesis explain the spirit (ruh) to mean – not that ‘a part of God’ was breathed into Adam – but to: “An incorporeal, life-giving substance coursing through man, which God ascribes to Himself as a mark of honour and distinction.”[22] Which is to say that Adam, the first human being (as well as all his descendents), is a sacred, exalted and noble creation. To claim man evolved from a non-human species contradicts the truth told to us in the Qur’an about Adam’s special creation, and is therefore disbelief.

I suppose a summary of Islam’s stance towards the theory of evolution can be distilled in the following points: (i) God alone causes all that is to be or to not be. The flora and fauna of the world is His work alone, without associate. (ii) Causes and effects are both created by God and have no autonomy from Him. To believe causes have efficacy in and of themselves is shirk – ascribing ‘associates’ to God. Causal autonomy is what is generally understood by terms like ‘natural selection’ and ‘random mutation’.(iii) To believe that man evolved out of lower life forms is disbelief, regardless of whether the process is ascribed to God or to ‘natural selection’. This denies what the Qur’an tells us of Adam’s special creation. If, as the fossil records show, fairly-intelligent tool-using bipeds existed in Earth’s past history, they are not the ancestors of humanity nor the predecessors of Adam.[23] Facts about human-like fossils are one thing, theories and wild speculation about their links to human beings are another thing altogether.

5. On the Knife-Edge of Improbability

Though rancorous debates continue to rage about evolution’s validity, there seems to be no real reason at all to dismiss the theory outright. In fact, insists Collins, very little makes sense in the field of molecular biology and genetics, except in the light of the theory’s predictions.[24] The sticking point for theists, though, above all else, concern the fossil records of humans which, despite some revealing discoveries over the past few decades, still remain woefully incomplete.

Science faces other nagging concerns about the bigger picture. Human consciousness, for instance, and what gives rise to it? Why there exists what some call ‘the moral law’: an intuitive knowledge about the basic rules of right and wrong shared by all people (our voice of conscience, as it were). Then there is the grandest conundrum of them all. Life on Earth aside, how did the universe come into existence so finely tuned in a form hospitable to life?

Most scientists do not hesitate to acknowledge this remarkable fact of how tailor-made to life our universe actually is. Cosmologists tell us, for instance, that had the force of gravity been a tiny fraction weaker than what it actually is, matter could not have lumped together to form stars or galaxies. The universe would have been a lifeless sea of drifting gas and interminable darkness. Had gravity been ever so slightly stronger, the universe would have collapsed back on itself; neither being able to expand nor allow life to evolve. A similar tale holds true for the force binding protons and neutrons together in an atom (the strong nuclear force). Had it been slighter weaker, only hydrogen atoms could have formed in the cosmos; nothing else. If, on the other hand, it had been slightly stronger the nuclear furnace within stars would not be able to produce heavy elements like carbon, which is critical for life. Actually, the nuclear force appears to be tuned just sufficiently for carbon atoms to form. That our universe seems uniquely tuned to give rise to life, more specifically; human life, is known as the Anthropic Principle. And it remains a source of intense wonder, debate and speculation among scientists, philosophers and theologians since it was fully appreciated a few decades ago.

All in all there are fifteen cosmological constants which, because they have the values and parameters they have, allows the emergence of a universe capable of supporting complex life. In his Just Six Numbers, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, states that these finely-tuned cosmological constants, “constitute a ‘recipe’ for a universe. Moreover, the outcome is sensitive to their values: if any one of them were to be ‘untuned’, there would be no stars and no life.”[25]

“The chance,” says Collins, “that all these constants would take on the values necessary to result in a stable universe capable of sustaining complex life forms is almost infinitesimal. And yet those are exactly the parameters we observe.”[26]

6. Making Sense of the Mystery

Three possible responses have been put forth for this fine-tuning. The first response is a shrug of the shoulder one. Things are what they are, or else we wouldn’t be here; so there’s nothing to be surprised about. To this it’s just the way things are attitude, Rees says: “Many scientists take this line, but it certainly leaves me unsatisfied. I’m impressed by a metaphor given by the Canadian philosopher John Leslie. Suppose you are facing a firing squad. Fifty marksmen take aim, but they all miss. If they hadn’t missed, you wouldn’t have survived to ponder the matter. But you wouldn’t just leave it at that – you’d still be baffled, and would seek some further reason for your good fortune.”[27]

The second response, like the third, does offer an explanation. There are multiple universes parallel to our own; governed by different laws and defined by different values. Our universe is simply a result of trial and error in that it is one in which all the fundamental constants work together to permit life. A drawback with this ‘multiverse’ hypothesis is that, leaving alone its incredulity, it only re-jigs the ultimate question. Instead of asking how our universe arose, we now must ask how these multiple universes emerged.

Divine providence is the final response. This is the belief that a wise, omniscient, beneficent Creator formed the universe, endowing it with purpose, meaning and remarkable beauty; with the specific intention of producing man. Stephan Hawking, in his best-selling A Brief History of Time, wrote – in what seems to be a moment of epiphany: “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”[28] Indeed!

For believers, the moral law within us (which is part of our primordial nature, or fi†rah), and the anthropic fine-tuning of the starry heavens above us, both point, undoubtedly, to a purposeful cosmic designer. In this regard, the Creator has let it be known: We shall show them Our signs in the creation around them, as well as in their ownselves, till it becomes manifest to them that this [Revelation] is the Truth.[29]

SURKHEEL (ABU AALIYAH) SHARIF

Notes:

1. Jonathan Hill, The Big Questions (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2007), 215.
2. The Persistence of Faith (New York: Continuum, 2005), 9.
3 Sacks, The Dignity of Difference (New York: Continuum, 2003), 41.
4. The Language of God (London: Pocket Books, 2007), 161.
5. Qur’an 38:27. Also cf. 3:191, 10:5, 29:44.
6. Dawkins, River Out of Eden (London: Phoenix, 2001), 155.
7. Cited in Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin’s God (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 287.
8. Dawkins’ recent best seller, The God Delusion – which contains a collage of overstated factoids, riducle of religion, shoddy theology, reductionist arguments, straw-man assertions, but skillful penmanship; along with a few other tenets in his dogma of atheism – has been robustly and elegantly critiqued in: Alister MacGrath, Dawkins’ God (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005); and The Dawkins Delusion (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2007); Cornwell, Darwin’s Angel (London: Profile Books, 2007); Latham, The Naked Emperor (London: Janus Publishing, 2007).
9. Qur’an 21:30.
10. Qur’an 51:47.
11. Qur’an 23:12-14.
12. Islam the Basics (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), 41. I have replaced Koran, used in the original passage, with Qur’an – so as to keep the spelling consistent with the rest of the essay.
13. Cf. Hamza Yusuf (trans.), The Creed of Imam al-Tahawi (USA: Zaytuna Institute, 2007), 50; pt.14.
14. Qur’an 13:16.
15. Qur’an 37:96. The orthodox doctrine regarding man’s deeds is that, “Human actions are God’s creation but humanity’s acquisition.” Cf. The Creed of Imam al-Tahawi, 74; pt.107.
16. Cf. The Creed of Imam al-Tahawi, 52; pt.24, 25
17. Qur’an, 39:62. Imam al-Safarini states that God is the Cause of causes (musabbab al-asbåb): “meaning, that He is the creator of all causes and conjoins them to their effects.” In other words, God alone creates causes, creates effects, and combines the two. Cf. Lawami‘ al-Anwar al-Bahiyyah (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1991), 1:39.
18. Ibn Abi’l-’Izz, Sharh al-‘Aqidah al-Tahawiyyah (Beirut: Mu’assassah al-Risalah, 1999), 2:696. Also consult: Keller, Evolution Theory & Islam (Cambridge: The Muslim Academic Trust, 1999), 8-9.
19. Al-Safarini defines the possible as: “That whose existence and non-existence is equally acceptable, as per the sound intellect and rational inquiry.” Lawami‘ al-Anwar al-Bahiyyah, 1:58. As for what is necessary in respect of God, this would include: God’s existence and Him being pre-eternal. Under what is possible would be subsumed: sending of prophets, revealing of heavenly scripture, and legislating sacred laws. The impossible, as theologians state, include: God being non-existent, Him not being one or unique, and Him not being omnipotent or omniscient. Cf. Lawami‘ al-Anwar al-Bahiyyah, 1:58; al-Bayjuri, Tuhfat al-Murid ‘ala Jawharat al-Tawhid (Cairo: Dar al-Salam, 2006), 68-75.
Under this last catagory comes a favourite conundrum of many atheists: Can God create a stone He cannot lift? The paradox being that if God can create such a stone, then He is not omnipotent; all-powerful. If God cannot, again He is not omnipotent. This oxymoron, sometimes referred to as the ‘omnipotence paradox’, is a fallacious argument; a logical impossibility – as Ibn Abi’l-‘Izz explains: “Ahl al-Sunnah believe God has power over all things, and that whatever is possible falls under this omnipotence. As for what is intrinsically impossible – such as something existing and not existing at one and the same time – then this has no reality, nor is its existence conceivable, and nor is it termed a ‘thing’ by agreement of those with sound minds. Included in this catagory would be [the questions]: can God create the like of Himself; can He be non-existent; and other such absurdities.” Sharh al-‘Aqidah al-Tahawiyyah, 1:206. The above serves as a reply to the stone paradox, and whether or not God can create a four-sided-triangle, etc.
20. For a good discussion about humanoid fossil records, the non-specialist lay reader can consult: Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (Great Britain: Black Swan, 2004), 522-62.
21. Qur’an 38:71-6. As for the mention of God’s hands, or His ascending, or any other quality which seems to smack of the sin of anthropomorphism (tashbih), Ibn Kathir explains: “People have, in this issue, taken many [conflicting] positions; but now is not the place to discuss them. Rather, in this regard, we traverse the path taken by the Pious Predecessors (salaf al-salih): Malik; al-Awzå‘i; al-Thawri; Layth b. Sa‘d; al-Shafi‘i; Ahmad; Ishaq b. Rahawayah; and other leading Muslim scholars, ancient and recent, which was to let the verse pass as it came – without inquiring how (takyif), committing resemblance (tashbih), or denying it (ta‘til): the apparent meaning that comes to the minds of the anthropomorphists is negated from God. For nothing created resembles Him in any way.” Tafsir Qur’an al-Azim (Beirut: Dar al-Ma’rifah, 1987), 2:30.
22. Ar. “jismun latifun yahya bihi’l-insan wa adafaha ila nafsihi tashrifan wa takriman.” Al-Sam‘ani, Tafsir al-Qur’an (Riyadh: Dar al-Watn, 1997), 3:138; al-Qurtubi, Jami‘ li Ahkam al-Qur’an (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyyah, 1996), 10:17.
23. The Islamic stand is also untenable with Theistic Evolution which, Francis Collins tells us, “is the dominant position of serious biologists who are also serious believers … It is the view espoused by many Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Christians, including Pope John Paul II.” The main objection to it lies in its premise that once evolution got under way, no divine intervention was required, as well as believing that humans share a common ancestry with the great apes. This, along with their belief that it was God who created life on earth, choosing the elegant mechanism of evolution to bring about our planet’s biological diversity and complexity. Cf. The Language of God, 199-201.
For further readings on evolution from a Muslim perspective, one may consult: Shaikh Abdul Mabud, Theory of Evolution: Assessment from the Islamic Point of View (Cambridge: Islamic Academy, 1992); Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood, Thinking About God (Indiana: American Trust Publications, 1994); Nuh Ha Mim Keller, Evolution Theory & Islam (Cambridge: The Muslim Academic Trust, 1999).
24. The Language of God, 141.
25. Just Six Numbers (Great Britain: Phoenix Books, 1999), 4.
26. The Language of God, 74.
27. Just Six Numbers, 165-6.
28. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Press, 1998), 144.
29. Qur’an 41:53. Also cf. the discussion of the Anthropic Principle given by the eminent physicist and Christian theologian John Polkinghorne in Beyond Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 80-92.

4. Keeping it Real or Being Crippled by Nostalgia?

Ever since the Prophet's era, peace be upon him, Muslims have sought a divine meaning in socio-political vicissitudes. Triumph and victory was traditionally seen as a sign that Muslims, on the whole, were in a state of pleasing surrender to God's will, and were being favoured with Heaven's good grace. Humiliation or defeat, on the other hand, were seen as signs of a waning in the devoutness of the believers, and a weakening of the bonds between Heaven and the Muslim polity on earth. To this end, the Qur'an insists: Whatever good befalls you is from God, and whatever ill befalls you is from yourselves.14 Whatever calamity befalls you is for what your own hands have earned.15 God never changes the condition of a people unless they change what is in themselves.16

Some see the Ottoman defeat at the second siege of Vienna, in 1683, as marking the watershed in the ummah's fortunes. Others point to Napoleon's occupation of Egypt, in 1798, as the tipping point. What is certain is that by the end of the nineteenth century, European intrusion into the Islamic world, along with its subsequent colonisation of it, was more or less complete. The once underrated West saw victory on the battlefield, in the marketplace, and eventually in almost all aspects of public and even private life. It was now that the collective Muslim conscience began to anguish over “What went wrong?”

The traditional response blamed a diminishing adherence to the prescriptions and duties sanctioned by faith (“But they abandoned the commands of God, so look what's become of them.”). The class of Western-educated Muslims which was just emerging, in contrast, laid the blame upon what was actually being adhered to. In their view, traditional Islamic teachings was what had made the Muslim world stagnant and was impeding their progress. If Muslims desired freedom from colonialisation, and wished to regain their dignity and political independence, they would have to modernise institutions and education, and, above all, rethink religion. This, in a nutshell, was their analysis. Some of them forsook religion. Others sought – in the light of modern science, technology and philosophical thought – to modernise and reform religion (and in our time, call for its liberalisation and democratisation).

A desire to facilitate ease, evolvement to fit the times, apologists, colonised minds, buckling under pressure – whatever the motives were that spurred on these modernists and reformers, one thing was incontestable: the world had changed dramatically – the material world, as well as the world of ideas – and that change of some sort would be required by Muslims.

For modernists (and the ‘liberals' who, in our time, have inherited the baton of reform and progress from them), it was clear that the pre-modern formulation of the shari'ah had not only run out of steam and creativity, but it had also lost its ability – and hence its relevance – to evolve and adapt law to ever-changing situations. Armed with this, and a bundle of other well-placed and misplaced convictions, they embarked on the project of radically reformulating Islam in order to bring it into modernity. Ostensibly, this seemed like a good thing. To this, the caution of Ibn Mas'ud – a leading scholar among the first generation of Muslims – comes swiftly to mind: “How many there are that intend good, yet never reach the good.”17

Unlike the secular modernists, who held the view that Islam should be totally cast aside, the more dominant trend in the modernist school sought to wed the basic values of Islam with a body of law suited to the needs of the modern age. To do this, however, they put traditional Islamic legal theory (usul al-fiqh) on the operating table and, wielding the scalpel of progress, cut away significant organs of this legal theory. Out went the concept of juristic consensus (ijma'); in its stead came “consensus of the community” – which even includes those of the community utterly untutored in law and legal theory! That all-important distinction between mujtahid-jurist and muqallid-layman was also sliced away.  In the age of CD-ROMs and global internet access, the modernists would soon insist, anyone literate in Arabic should have the right to investigate the sources of Islamic law; challenge past interpretations; and serve-up new DIY “ijtihads” to the now fragile Muslim world. There can be no surer way to strike a death blow to the Islamic faith than to undermine legal authority, fan the flames of religious anarchy, and encourage whimsical formulations of law. Inna li'Llahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un.

The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: “God does not take away knowledge by plucking it from the breasts of people, but He does so by bringing to an end the lives of the scholars (‘ulema). Until when no scholar remains, people will begin to appoint ignorant leaders for themselves who, when asked, will give verdicts without knowledge: themselves misguided and misguiding others.”18

The modernists' surgery entailed a number of radical bypasses too. Traditional rules governing ambiguous, absolute, restricted, general and particular textual language was mostly abandoned, as was the concept of naskh: abrogation, and qiyas: analogy. The once marginal role that maslahah, or public welfare, played in classical legal theory was greatly amplified to become the backbone of this hodgepodge of a reformulation. Now, any so-called need or necessity could be used as a pretext to override, or to rationalise away, hitherto clear-cut Islamic injunctions – all in the name of “public interest”. It was not only apparent to traditionally-trained scholars, but to others too, that the new legal system was arbitrary, chaotic, lacked intellectual and methodological rigour and, above all, seemed to pay little more than lip service to the divine sources.19 No wonder, then, that the ‘ulema levelled charges of zandaqa; “heresy,” against much of the reformulations of the reformers. For modernists, though, what did the ‘ulema really know anyway. They were still “stuck in Madinah”.

No doubt, Islam is an inherently conservative tradition; and a cardinal tenet of such a tradition is to conserve and preserve revealed truths and protect it from attack. Pivotal to this are the ‘ulema. One hadith declares: “This knowledge will be carried by the trustworthy ones of every generation. They shall rid from it the distortions of the extremists; the false claims of the liars; and the erroneous interpolations of the ignorant.”20

But such conservatism can be a double-edged sword. Though it may be able to preserve what is essential and precious, it has the potential – not only of being open, foreword-thinking and embracing – but of being closed, highly sectarian and repelling. Regrettably, some of the ultra-conservatives tend to characterise this narrowness only too well. It is equally true that most of today's ‘ulema seem thoroughly stumped by modernity: their discourse about it barely extending beyond a few criticisms levelled at Western immorality and ungodliness. One Islamic legal maxim stipulates: hukm ‘ala shay' far‘un ‘an tasawwurihi – “passing judgement about a thing comes after [correctly] conceptualising it.” So without understanding the ideologies and institutions that underpin modernity, how can we expect to come to grips with it and overcome it; or to at least navigate safely through it?

GETTING BACK ON OUR FEET

Yet all is not bleak. Some of the more nuanced and informed ‘ulema – observing the extremism of the radicals and the liberalism of the modernists, with a faint grin of disquiet and dismay – are at pains to iterate to us words of realism and sanity. The first thing they point out is that modernity is a juggernaut, and has a tendency to flatten anything that comes in its way. Therefore, clashing with it head-on is unwise; to say the very least. Nor should it be a case of its wholesale acceptance (or rejection). Muslims, they also point out, seem to have an endless fascination with short term political issues, yet are largely ignorant of the wider trends of which these issues are merely the passing manifestations. Unless we Muslims become conscious of the larger trends of the age, we will continue to flounder in our current predicament.

Secondly; having asserted the above, the ‘ulema then draw our attention to the following fact. That the goal of Islamic civilisation has never been scientific or material progress, but rather realising slavehood to God (tahqiq al-'ubudiyyah) and perfecting the human soul. Its most holistic expression comes to us in the celebrated hadith of the Angel Gabriel,21 where he came to teach the Muslims that religion – in its entirety – is encompassed in the three dimensions of iman, islam and ihsan: beliefs, practice, and spiritual growth – or if you like: knowing, doing, and becoming.22 For Muslims – individuals and societies – actualising these three levels of human life is the real measure of our progress and success. Whatsmore, it won't be hidden from those familiar with Islam's religious texts and history, that the optimum balance to ever be achieved vis-a-via these three dimensions of religion was by the Muslim community in Madinah during the lifetime of the Prophet; peace be upon him. In fact, from then onwards, it was to be (with a few exceptions aside) downhill all the way. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: “No time will come upon you except the time after it will be worse than it; until you meet your Lord.”23 He also informed us: “The best of mankind is my generation; then those who follow them; then those who follow them.”24 The Qur'an itself has it: As for the foremost, the first of the Emigrants and the Helpers, and those who follow them in excellence, God is pleased with them, as they too are pleased with Him. He has prepared for them Gardens beneath which rivers flow, wherein they shall dwell forever. That is the supreme triumph.25 It is not surprising, then, that this epic and unique Quranic generation, as it has been called, is one that most Muslims look back upon with reverence, loyalty and a deep sense of nostalgia.

No doubt, nostalgia may so overcome some people that they can end-up trying to relive the past. The love affair with the Prophet's Madinah can, if we are not careful, blur the distinction between what is descriptive in Madinah from what is prescriptive. But that, for the large part, may be remedied by following sound fiqh. Nostalgia for Madinah, as the more nuanced ‘ulema remind us, in no way implies ignoring our current reality and responsibilities. For loyalty to the past does not mean living in the past.

Lastly, they remind us that as the End of Days approaches, various “Signs of the Hour” are anticipated. Among them is the increase in social commotions, seditions and civil wars – collectively referred to as fitan (sing. fitnah). Here the hadiths tell us that, “There will be periods of commotion in which one who sits will be better than one who stands; one who stands will be better than one who walks; one who walks will be better than one who runs.”26 When asked what to do in such times, the Prophet instructed: “Keep to your houses, control your tongues, cling to what you approve, leave what you disapprove, attend to your own affairs, and avoid public affairs.”27 The eleventh century Shafi'i jurist and hadith master, al-Munawi, explains that keeping to your houses … clinging to what you approve means: keeping your head down and getting on with what benefits and concerns your spiritual and worldly well-being. Leaving what you disapprove mandates avoiding such affairs of people which you know to be contrary to the Sacred Law. This, along with thanking God for averting this iniquity from you, as well as censuring the wrong with civility, gentleness and patience, and with an inward serenity born of a conviction that – despite things seeming bleak – all is in God's hand, and all is unfolding according to the divine plan. Avoiding the affairs of the general public, as al-Munawi says, implies that when enjoining good or forbidding evil is more likely to be ineffective at rectifying a fitnah or a social ill – either because of it being so widespread; or too entrenched; or one simply fears for their own safety in doing so – there is a dispensation to not engage the wrong or seek to check it. However, one is still duty bound by faith to detest the wrong inwardly, and to knuckle down and carry out the cardinal demands made by religion.28

Though scholars point out that the circumstance warranting this type of social disengagement hasn't quite come to a head yet, they do speak about significant parallels between such times and our current one. So what do they counsel? By no means are they agreed upon a detailed plan or response. But for some time now a consensus has begun to emerge among them about the most appropriate course of action. Since modernity is a one-way street and religion positioned in the wrong direction, the ‘ulema realise that any forward motion is fraught with difficulty and danger. They are aware, too, of the need to steer a path between mindlessly reacting to modernity and timidly retreating from it.

Priority, they stress, is for Muslims to learn and maintain the fard al-‘ayn: those duties that are a personal obligation for each Muslim to know and fulfil. They also underscore living according to the Prophet's Sunnah, peace be upon him, wherever we can; as much as we can. This applies to the private sphere. As for the public space, the advice here is more nebulous. Are we obliged to challenge modernity square on and brazenly confront its decadent wrongs? A mixture of textual indicants, received wisdoms, experience and hindsight have all worked together to make this an intemperate option as far as most ‘ulema are concerned. Any militant conflictual policy is more likely to harm Islam than anything else. Instead, do what you can in the public space, is what they advise, and begin to develop strong civil institutions: religious, educational and social. Furthermore, start to form Alliances of Virtue with like-minded non-Muslims in order to help build a better society – alliances aimed at working for justice, accommodation and coexistence.

What this requires is for us to adopt a far more nuanced, wiser and courageous approach; albeit one where the balanced and spiritual nature of Islam can better manifest itself, and where it can also retain its voice as a prophetically-inspired dissent whilst engaging the realities of the modern world. This sacred function of Muslims being dissenting witnesses is based on the verse: Thus have We made you a middle nation, that you may be a witness over mankind, and that the Messenger may be a witness over you.29

With this being said, what of the “liberal” question? That is to say, what about the concerns highlighted by “liberal Islam” and the modern, liberal world: the issue of womens' equality, democracy, human rights, freedom of thought and progress, separation of church and state? Can, as many in the West now ask, traditional Islam fit a modern, liberal world, or are they simply incompatible? Is there one voice with which traditionalists speak, or are there diverse voices?These are some of the themes to be discussed in the third and final part of this blog, God-willing.

SURKHEEL (ABU AALIYAH) SHARIF

Notes

14. Qur'an 4:79.

15. Qur'an 42:30.

16. Qur'an 13:11.

17. Al-Darami, Sunan, 1:68-9.

18. Al-Bukhari, no.34; Muslim, no.2673.

19. As per the observations of Wael B. Hallaq in his A History of Islamic Legal Theories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 211, 261.

Coulson noted that, “Strict theorists may, and indeed do, object to the activities of the reformers on the ground that the interpretation of the divine texts should be purely objective, while so-called modern “ijtihad” amounts to little more than forcing from the divine texts that particular interpretation which agrees with preconceived standards subjectively determined.” A History of Islamic Law (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1964), 216.

20. Al-Bayhaqi, Sunan al-Kubra, 10:209; al-Khatib, Sharafu Ashab al-Hadith, no.50. Al-Qastalani, Irshad al-Sari, 1:4, grades the hadith hasan since its many chains strengthen one another.

21. Cf. Muslim, Sahih, no.8. The complete English text may be found in Ibrahim & Johnson-Davies (trans.), An-Nawawi's Forty Hadith (Beirut: Dar al-Koran al-Kareem, 1983), 28-33.

22. They can also be expressed as: intending, worshipping, and witnessing; or as: law (shari'ah); path (tariqah); and reality (haqiqah). Cf. Ibn Ajibah, Iqaz al-Himam (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyyah, 2008), 23.

23. Al-Bukhari, no.7068.

24. Al-Bukhari, no.2652; Muslim, no.2533.

25. Qur'an 9:100.

26. Al-Bukhari, no.3601; Muslim, 2886.

27. Abu Dawud, Sunan, no.4342. Its chain is hasan, as per al-Munawi, Fayd al-Qadir (Beirut: Dar al-Ma'rifah, n.d.), no.626; and sahih, as per al-Albani, Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Sahihah (Riyadh: Maktabah al-Ma'arif, 1995), no.205.

28. Cf. Fayd al-Qadir, 1:353.

29. Qur'an 2:143.

Being associated with a discourse against terrorism is definitely not my worry here. In fact, combating violent extremism, and exposing its false theological underpinnings, has been a core aspect of my outreach programme ever since the early nineties – for which I first thank God for His grace, and thereafter my teachers in Sacred Law for alerting me to its evils. No, my unease, among other things, concerns the idea of progress and being progressive. What does it mean? And what are we meant to be progressing towards?

At first blush, these questions may sound strange; particularly from someone who is supposed to be a progressive, British Muslim voice. But that’s my point. We’ve become so used to using such terms, that more often than not, we seem to have lost the sense of what is being intended by them. Standard dictionary definitions explain the word progress as ‘a movement forward towards a given direction’; or ‘a development towards a more advanced state’. More often than not, it is employed to mean ‘favouring new ideas and social reform’. Here, for many Muslims, the questions that immediately come to mind are: Does Islam need development? Is the Islamic faith crude; primitive – barbaric, even – that it needs to be made more advanced? Who has the right to decide such issues, and who does the task then fall upon to ‘update’ this age-old faith? Some will even ask how such proposed changes square with the Quranic declaration about the religion being ‘complete’ and ‘perfect’: This day have I perfected your religion for you, and completed My favour upon you, and chosen Islam for you as religion.2 The more theologically grounded will assert that believing any established, clear-cut injunction3 of Islam to be primitive or outdated – let alone claiming it to be barbaric – is nothing short of disbelief; kufr. After all, doesn’t the Qur’an insist about God and His judgements: Is not God the best of Judges?4 Moreover: Is it a judgement of [idolatrous] ignorance that they are seeking? Who is a better judge than God for a people who have certainty of faith?5 So faith requires, not just accepting that God’s judgement is good; but that it is, in fact, the best!

What follows, I suppose, are some reflections about the nature of progress and the social changes we find ourselves in, and the responses we as Muslims are beginning to adopt in order to adapt; keep our faith relevant; and offer healing to a world deeply wounded – wa bihi nasta’in. For the sake of convenience, I’ve divided these reflections into six headings:

1. Divine Law, Human Efforts, Tools for Adaption

What I’d like to touch upon first is the nature of ‘Islamic Law’ or shari‘ah. The words shari’ah means ‘path’ or ‘track’, with its origins referring to the path by which wild animals would come down to drink at their watering place. In the religious vernacular, shari’ah refers to Islam’s Sacred Law: a road, so to speak, that leads to where the waters of life flow abundantly.

The science that evolved so as to understand the shari’ah is called fiqh, usually translated as ‘jurisprudence’, and is culled from the word faqiha; which means ‘to understand’. Fiqh, therefore, is about understanding the divine commands and the way they shape the life-pattern of the believers. Strictly speaking, then, shari’ah refers to the actual body of revealed laws, whereas fiqh is the science of understanding these laws – and this involves human effort.

This ‘effort’ to understand, expound, and adapt the law so as to keep it relevant to the age and place Muslims may find themselves in, is known as ijtihad, and it is the prerogative of mujtahids – those judged to be qualified and capable of such efforts, but only after receiving prolonged theological, legal, grammatical and hermeneutical training. Fathoming the intent of the Lawgiver, or inferring new rulings from the primary sources, is always an uphill task. Oftentimes the jurist has to struggle through long days and nights before reaching an opinion. The Arabic terminology used to signify this is badhl al-juhd, or istifragh al-wus’, which basically means expending all possible effort to evaluate the proof-texts so as to reach a ruling. The mujtahid, in other words, leaves no stone unturned in order to uncover the divine intent. The significance is that ijtihad is not just one of juristic effort or exertion; but of exhaustion! Needless to say, a mujtahid’s ijtihad must not contradict any categorical stipulation in the revealed texts, nor contravene an established point of scholarly consensus (ijma’).

Shaykh al-Shalabi, addressing the charge that Islam seeks to “turn the clock back”, states: “As for that phenomenon questionably termed progress, it has never impaired Islam’s relevance and effectiveness. Islam, as the Prophet taught it, works well in the technological age; indeed it seems to be the only religion which has retained its dynamism and character intact in the modern world.” He goes on to write: “Islam was forbidden to create a priestly class. Rather, it developed a tradition of religious scholars (‘ulema), who, although they were possessed of no special sacramental function, nevertheless provided the intellectual re-articulation of eternal truths to a world in constant flux. It was the religious scholars who assessed new legal situations, new doctrinal challenges, and who suggested ways in which an adaption to novel circum-stances could be effected while remaining loyal to the revelation of the Qur'an and the teachings of the Prophet. This process of adaption is termed ijtihad, a technical and highly sophisticated science of jurisprudence which, while affirming the timeless efficacy of the social teachings set down in revelation, provides a means for the systematic extension of these guidelines when circumstance demands. … This capacity, not for change, but for expansion, undoubtedly constitutes a key factor in Islam’s continuing dynamism.”6

A closing thought to the section. For close to a thousand years, Islam’s juristic enterprise has been a key factor in the stability of Muslim societies. Every now and then, though, there have been those who have claimed the right to exercise ijtihad; and, as Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali wrote, “Among them were those allowed to do so, given that the truth of their claim had become clear. Others, however, had their words hurled back at them, and were deemed to have been false in their claim.”7 Separating the wheat from the chaff is essential if the integrity of our legal culture is to be retained. Islam, without sounding too conspiratorial, has shrewd opponents and intelligent foes who realise this fact only too well. It is sad to see, then, many enthusiastic lay folk now being taught that their faith obliges them to ‘evaluate’ and ‘weigh-up’ the evidences, and to then follow the ‘strongest’ view as per the proofs. Their unqualified dabbling in the fine art of ijtihad – for that is what they are attempting – has not only led to chaos, bitter conflict and social mayhem, it has also served to weaken the juristic tradition which has so lent itself to Islam’s durability. This is not suggesting such people have ‘sided with the enemy’; they have, nonetheless, become unwitting pawns in the attempted dismantling of Islam’s legal tradition. Having strayed this far, others will drift further still.

2. Remembering Our Journey’s End

Progress, as noted before, signifies a movement forward; but it tells us nothing about the direction of this movement. Is it uphill or downhill? Is it an ascent or a descent? Is it a lifting of the Spirit or a fall from Grace? There are many things that march progressively forward. Even cancer is progressive. What I’m trying to say is: how do we know if progress is good for us, and by what standard is it measured? One of Islam’s arbab al-qulub – “spiritual masters” or “masters of the inward life” – once uttered the remark: “fi’l-harakah barakah – in movement there is blessings.” Clearly, though, not every movement is blessed.

Even the point of how far we’ve advanced in terms of science and technology is something of a red herring when evaluating the idea of change and progress. The Qur’an relates a number of narratives about former civilisations and their ‘technological’ achievements of the day. Yet when put side by side with their intransigence and heedlessness of the divine Reality, such progress is seen for what it really is: folly, delusion and civilisational arrogance. Says the Qur’an: Have they not travelled in the earth and seen the end of those before them. They were stronger than they in power, and they dug the earth and built upon it more than they have built. Their Messengers came to them with clear proofs. God wronged them not, but they wronged themselves. Evil was the end of those who dealt in evil, because they denied the signs of God and mocked them.8

Early Muslim pietists were at pains to instil in us the vital Quranic lesson, that material progress – ‘digging the earth and building upon it’ – can never be the measure of any true or meaningful success. Islamic sources relate to us that in 649AD the first Muslim navel expedition was sent against the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, which was under the control of a Byzantine empire; now in its twilight years. The Muslim army was quick to overrun the small Byzantine garrison and the Cypriots were soon paying tribute to the Muslims. On seeing the ease with which the people of this once powerful empire lay defeated and subdued, the famous Companion of the Prophet, Abu’l-Darda, began to weep. On being asked why he wept on the day God had granted victory to Islam and the Muslims, he answered: “Woe to you! How insignificant creation become to God when they neglect His commands. Here is a nation that was once mighty and strong, and had dominion. But they abandoned the commands of God, so look what’s become of them.”9

In judging the contemporary world’s unrelenting drive for progress, believers need not concur with all the orthodoxies and popular assumptions of the age. Civilisational greatness and technological progress for their own sake, as can be seen, count for very little in the Quranic scheme of things. We are not to be mesmerised by “the barefooted, scantly-clad, destitute herdsmen competing in constructing lofty buildings,” as the Prophet forewarned.10 Digging the earth is one thing; burying the path to the soul’s salvation is another thing altogether. Hence let us pose that all-important question again: How should change and progress be appraised?

“For Muslims,” wrote Gai Eaton, “there can be only one test by which to assess change. Does it promote piety – awareness of the divine presence – or diminish it? Does it lead to an increasing number of men and women to the gates of Paradise or does it encourage them to stray from God’s path? Does it reinforce the divinely revealed Law or does it blur the distinction between what is commanded and what is forbidden? There are, of course, other considerations but they must take a lower place in a fixed order of priorities. An increase in life expectancy is, obviously, a good thing, but it is worthless if these additional years do not lead to an increasing awareness of the divine Reality which we are soon to meet. There is nothing inherently wrong with the comforts provided by the modern world, better hygiene, better drainage, more convenient means of transport, but these count for nothing if their soft embrace encourages us to forget our origin and our end.”11

3. Muslim Responses to Social Change

I suppose there are a few ways of depicting how we as Muslims are currently trying to square loyalty to the shari’ah with our rapidly-changing social context. Any such description, though, will be a generalisation; an approximation of a fairly complex set of dynamics. Yet to make such subtleties indecently simple, we can say that two orientations towards change are discernible. The first is often referred to as ‘traditionalist’; the second, ‘modernist’. Although these two methods represent the two ends of the spectrum for change, nonetheless there is some overlap as one moves from the poles down to the middle. To add some sense of nuance, I’d like to sub-divide the traditionalists into two groups, thus giving us three broad responses to change:

I. THE ULTRA CONSERVATIVES

The traditionalist position, which is that of the mainstream ‘ulema, or scholars, is conservative; emphasises classical formulations of Islam; and is cautious of innovation and change. At its extreme are the ultra-conservatives; those who believe that Islam has been sufficiently expressed in classical tomes of fiqh, and that it is not the pre-modern formulations of Islam that need changing, but the society that has drifted away from its guidance. When they do permit change, it is seen as something temporary; a sort of weathering the storm.

II. NUANCED TRADITIONALISTS

The second group of traditionalists take a much more nuanced approach. They are careful to distinguish between those aspects of the shari’ah which are fixed and unchanging, and those open to adaption and expansion. In other words, they recognise that some religious rulings are immutable, whereas others are contingent and cultural. They also distinguish between the ‘illah – the rationale which gives rise to a legal ruling, and hikmah – the actual wisdom behind the given ruling. They also draw on the rich body of legal philosophy which deals with the aims of the Sacred Law (maqasid al-shari’ah), as well as give credence to customs and norms – as per the legal maxim: al-‘adah muhakkamah – “cultural norms have the weight of law”, or “custom determines what is law”. There is also the rule which dictates that: taghayyur al-fatwa bi taghayyur al-azman – “the fatwa changes with the changing of time”. Additionally, jurists have at their disposal a large body of fatwas and legal precedents which go under the rubric of: ma ta’ummu bihi al-balwah – “problematic issues that are of general concern to the community”. This refers to those circumstances for which, when certain afflictions become rampant and widespread, and begin to affect many people, allowances must then be made for them due to the legal concept of darurah: “neccessity/vital interest”. It goes without saying that knowing how and when to employ such complex legal devices is the art and craft of the jurist-mujtahid; and none other.

Al-Qarafi, a prominent sixth century jurist, wrote: “Those handing down legal judgements while clinging blindly to the texts in their books, without regard for the cultural realities of their people, are in gross error. They are in opposition to established legal consensus as well as being guilty of sin and disobedience before God … Their blind adherence to what is written in the legal compendia is misguidance in the religion of Islam and utter ignorance of the ultimate aims behind the rulings of the past scholars and great personages of the past whom they claim to be imitating.”12

Two centuries later, Ibn al-Qayyim endorsed al-Qarafi’s approach, affirming: “This is pure understanding of the Sacred Law. Whoever issues legal rulings to the people based merely upon what is transmitted in the compendia – despite differences in their customs, usages, times, places, conditions, as well a special circumstances of their situation – has strayed and leads others astray.”13

Applying the law to new and evolving situations is, without doubt, a difficult task, and at times there may be a fine line between adaption and adulteration: but a line there nevertheless is. The traditional ‘ulema have, during the last few centuries, seen a rising number of charlatans – far removed from fulfilling the requisites of ijtihad – calling for reform of the shari‘ah, and claiming the right to do so for themselves. Hence in the eyes of those learned in Sacred Law, talk of change, or of adapting to the times, has more to do with hawa: caprice; whims; desires, than it does huda: divine guidance.

To sum-up: for such traditionalists, change (or rather, adaptation) occurs under the guidance of jurists and mujtahids, and in a way that is accepting, yet critical and selective of what the West has to offers in terms of science, technology and intellectual thought. Along with this, there must be a realisation that it is in the very nature of the modern, secular world to erode all that is sacred, and that its offerings are seldom neutral or value-free, but are instead enmeshed in profane western values and philosophies: secularism, individualism, materialism. For traditionalists, the issue isn’t about whether the law needs to adapt to change; instead it is about how much and by whom. For traditionalists, also, at the heart of any adaption must lie the preservation of faith, sacred norms, and obedience to the Divine Will.

III. MODERNISTS

As for the modernists, it is difficult to pigeon-hole them into a single unified narrative. Modernism is more of a rubric for a number of diverse ideas, trends and peoples: reformists, liberals, progressivists, secularists. What may be said to characterise them all is their jettisoning of tradition which, in Islam’s case, refers to an unbroken chain of learning and received wisdoms reaching all the way back to our Prophet, peace be upon him. Tradition is backward looking; it suffocates progress; it’s a relic of the past, the modernists would have us believe. Hence the mantra of modernism: “Islam needs a reformation.” After all, they argue, Christianity underwent a Reformation, and look what happened there. Look indeed!

The concluding part of this blog (to be posted shortly, God willing) discusses the modernists’ assertion that Islam requires some sort of reformation. It will also consider their claim that the traditional ‘ulema are still stuck in some sort of ‘nostalgic Madinah’.

—

Notes

1.     1. Cf. Quilliam Foundation, Pulling Together to Defeat Terror, 8. The actual document was released during the Foundation’s inaugural launch, 22/4/2008, and may be read at: www.quilliamfoundation.org
   

2.     2. Qur’an 5:3.
   

3.     3. By “established, clear-cut injunction,” I mean those rulings of the faith stemming from proofs that are univocal and categorical in their content and transmission (qat’i al-dalalah wa’l-riwayah).
   

4.     4. Qur’an 95:8.
   

5.     5. Qur’an 5:50.
   

6.     6. Islam: Religion of Life (USA: Starlatch Press, 2001), 23-4.
   

7.     7. Al-Radd ‘ala Man Ittaba’ Ghayra’l-Madhahib al-Arba’ah (Makkah: Dar ‘Alam al-Fawa’id, 1998), 29.
   

8.     8. Qur’an 30:9-10. Also cf. 6:6, 8:54, 22:45.
   

9.     9. Ibn Hanbal, al-Zuhd, 1:86 – as cited in Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Da’ wa’l-Dawa’ (Riyadh: Dar Ibn al-Jawzi, 1998), 67.
   

10.     10. Muslim, Sahih, no.8.
    

11.     11. Gai Eaton, Remembering God: Reflections on Islam (Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 2000), 25-6.
    

12.    12. Cited in Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allāh, Islam & the Cultural Imperative,  6-7; at www.nawawi.org/downloads/article3.pdf
    

13.     13. I’lam al-Muwaqqi’in (Riyadh: Dar Ibn al-Jawzi, 2003), 4:470.

Download the PDF.

The American then asked, ‘But what do you do with the rest of your time?’ The Mexican said, ‘I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll in the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, Señor.’

The American scoffed, ‘I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York, where you would run your expanding enterprise.’

The Mexican fisherman asked, ‘But Señor, how long would this all take?’ To which the American replied, ‘Fifteen to twenty years.’

‘But what then, Señor?’

The American laughed and said that was the best part. ‘When the time is right you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.’

‘Millions, Señor? Then what?’

The American said, ‘Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.’¹

More Fish Please, We’re British!

In his book Happiness, Richard Layard argues that, “once subsistence income is guaranteed, making people happier is not easy.”² His central argument is that as Western societies have got richer, their citizens have not got any happier. In fact, all the indicators suggest that, despite the increase in living standards and material comforts, we are no happier today than we were fifty years ago.

Britain is only now waking up to the social ills that its “buy now, pay later” culture has brought about. Easy credit and borrowing beyond our means has plunged this country into a huge debt crisis. This, in turn, has caused untold angst and misery for the nation: what with mortgage arrears escalating, more homes being repossessed, bankruptcies increasing, and peoples’ personal debts spiraling out of control. Simple wisdoms such as ‘if you haven’t got the money, don't spend it’ or ‘do you need to spend’ have, for the past decade or so, been sidelined and even bulldozed out of our collective sensibilities. Our culture of unbridled consumerism, rather than being a path to fulfillment, has become a national addiction. ‘Crack-consumerism’ is the collective substance abuse that we as a nation now indulge in.

How Britain moved from being a nation where thrift was a virtue and debt a vice, to owing a staggering trillion pounds (£1,000,000,000,000) on mortgages, credit cards and other loans, is the subject of some debate. It was less than a generation ago that borrowing money carried with it a severe social stigma. To borrow was to admit to living beyond one’s means. But that was then. Today’s Britain is one where the moral principles of thrift, foresight and responsibility have been substituted by greed and the cult of instant gratification. Today’s Britain is one where the social pressures and economic attitudes that surround us urge us to want more than we need; cajole us to mistake wants for needs. Our culture’s current measure of success make us crave for more possessions, more money, more status … more ‘fish’.

Yet the very happiness we are promised by buying those designer jeans, that mobile phone or this latest car, is what the next product assures us we do not have until we buy something else. As consumers, then, we end up anxious; unfulfilled; and unhappy – yet consumers nonetheless! “The endless spiral of material acquisition,” says Stephan Law, “cannot in fact make us more content. Like a drug addict, we simply get accustomed to whatever we’re getting, cease to derive much pleasure from it, and so start demanding even more. As a result, explains the philosopher Peter Singer, ‘once we have satisfied our basic needs, there is no level of material comfort at which we are likely to find significantly greater long-term fulfillment than any other level.’”³

More Fish Please, We’re Modern!

It was Gandhi who once said: “The world caters for everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed.” Although it has become something of a cliche, I’ll say it regardless: If everyone on this earth were to live and consume like the average Briton, we would need three more earths to service this consumerist lifestyle; six more if we all wanted to live like the average American. In his latest book Affluenza, Oliver James speaks of an ‘affluenza virus’ that is sweeping through the English-speaking world. This virus, he says, is a set of values which make us extremely prone to anxiety, depression and emotional stress, because of placing to high a value on consumerism and wanting to look good in the eyes of others. Whatsmore, he insists, we are now infecting the rest of the world with this virulent virus.⁴

A consumer-addicted society demands the quick and careless use of materials, and is built on the myth that human happiness can be found on the material plane alone. It also relies on its citizens being detached from, and blind to, the global havoc such a worldview spawns. Here, then, is a gentle reminder of just what we are currently doing to our planet, let alone its people, so as to keep the ‘fish’ coming in:

Half the world’s natural forests are being destroyed, whilst the remainder is being lost by an area half the size of Norway every year. Nearly a third of all the world’s cultivable land for growing food has been degraded because of intensive and unsustainable agricultural practices. Although still somewhat contentious, most scientists believe that greenhouse gases and the resultant climate changes have increased weather-related disasters such as droughts, floods and storms, and threatens to raise sea levels, submerge low-lying lands and reduce the world’s habitable areas. Seventy per-cent of the world’s fresh water is now being used for agriculture; in fact, one in five people around the globe survive on less water per day than is used to flush a toilet. And then, of course, there are the fish. Half of the world’s fisheries are now depleted, while another quarter is currently being over-fished. The human tragedy of all this modern greed and consumption is even more grotesque.

“And of course,” says Law, “ever-rising levels of consumption are impossible to maintain, for the resources we are drawing are finite. Not only are we damaging ourselves by pursuing our addiction to acquisitive materialism, we are also damaging the environment, eventually to the point where it will be beyond repair. Singer argues that we need fundamentally to rethink our attitudes to contentment, and to reject the consumerist model of happiness that is dragging us all to our doom.”⁵

More Fish Please, We’re Muslims!

Islam too has many significant things to say to us about our modern dilemma of consumerism – though this may not immediately be apparent if one were to look at Muslim attitudes toward consumption. Even those outside our faith tradition are starting to point out that we Muslims consume more food during the month of fasting, than we do outside of it! Our craving for more fish, it would appear, is little different than anyone else's.

Yet for a faith that has as one of its cardinal virtues zuhd – asceticism; a worldly detachment where luxury and opulence is shunned in favour of a simple and pious life – one would expect Muslims to be among the least afflicted by what is essentially an atheistic, materialistic, consumerist ideology. Sad, then, that many of us seem only to want to live the migrant’s dream and to sit back on our leather sofas; our four or five remote controls at hand for the plasma TV and home-entertainment system; Mercedes parked outside the door; mulling over what improvements to make to our homes next, and to feel pleased with ourselves because we’ve made it.

Such attitudes don’t quite square with the teachings of the Prophet, peace be upon him, who said: “Successful is he who accepts Islam, whose provisions are sufficient for him, and who is content with what God has bestowed on him.”⁶ Nor does it accord with the spirit of the prayer he would make: “O God, make the provisions of Muhammad’s family suffice their basic needs.”⁷ As for zuhd, he once remarked: “Renounce the world, and God will love you; renounce what others possess, and people will love you.”⁸ In fact, “Whoever loves this worldly life,” asserts one prophetic saying, “does damage to his Afterlife; and whoever loves the Afterlife, does damage to his present life. So prefer what is eternal to what is ephemeral.”⁹

Less there be some confusion here, Islam does not ask its adherents to forsake the material world and to live a monastic life. It does, however, stricture that the material world not become of greater concern to a believer than God and the Afterlife. Such an attitude is culled from the following verse of the Qur’an: “But seek the abode of the Afterlife in that which God has given you, and forget not your portion of the world, and be kind even as God has been kind to you, and seek not corruption in the earth; for God loves not the corrupters.”¹⁰

Islam is the great dissident force in today’s world. If we are all being dragged to our environmental doom, we need to be the ones applying the brakes. But this is not the place for mere pious sentiments, or being an armchair critic. We need to live the change we want to see in others and in society. This involves sacrifice; of instating the prophetic virtue of zuhd in our lives. We must show, as individuals and as communities, that Muslims have a real alternative to today’s consumer madness and the suffering it causes. As Muslims, we must live for the poor and with the poor. We must emancipate ourselves from being enslaved to this deceptive consumerist ideology. In essence, we need nothing short of what Abdul Hakim Murad calls “a prophetic uprising”.

One place to start would be with rethinking our attitudes towards wealth and consumerism. Layard explains in his book how social comparisons; the desire to keep up with the Smiths and the Jones, is an interminable source of stress for most people. He says that studies show that people are concerned about their income and wealth relative to that of others, and how “they would be willing to accept a significant fall in living standards if they could move up compared to other people.”¹¹ “So one secret of happiness,” he unveils to the reader, “is to ignore comparisons with people who are more successful than you are: always compare downwards, not upwards.”¹²

Informed Muslims will, no doubt, be quick to recall the Prophet’s words, peace be upon him: “Look at those who are below you [in wealth and status], do not look at those who are above you, so as not to belittle the favours that God has conferred on you.”¹³ And that’s precisely the point. Our happiness and our being content depend profoundly on our attitudes. For believers, the Prophet’s life is the finest example of how to live simply and be content, even when the world is thrown at your feet. His teachings are a treasure-trove of practical wisdoms on how to educate the spirit, yet live functionally in today’s material world. And the guidance he brought can help to distinguish between the ‘fish’ we need and those we merely want. It has the power to direct us towards a life of being content and sufficed, instead of being selfish.

SURKHEEL (ABU AALIYAH) SHARIF

Notes

1. Cited in Zohar & Marshal, Spiritual Intelligence (London & New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2001), p.282.
2. Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (England: Penguin Books, 2006), 4.
3. The Xmas Files (Great Britain: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003), 68.
4. Affluenza (Great Britain: Vermilion, 2007).
5. The Xmas Files, 68-9.
6. Muslim, Sahih, no.1054.
7. Al-Bukhari, Sahih, no.6460; Muslim, no.1055.
8. Ibn Majah, Sunan, no.4102.
9. Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 4:412.
10. Qur’an 28:77.
11. Happiness, 42.
12. ibid., 47.
13. Al-Bukhari, no.6490; Muslim, no.2963.

(originally posted here)

Rudyard Kipling’s poem, simply entitled If, ranks among the most popular pieces of poetry in Britain and enjoys widespread recognition. Written in 1895, and first published in 1910, the poem speaks of virtue, stoicism and personal integrity; and encapsulates profound mottos and maxims for life. Muslims, as with peoples of other faiths, will be quick to point out how these maxims and ideals closely contour their own faith teachings. In fact, the Victorian ethics If evokes has much in common with the conservative ethos that tempers Islam’s moral code: its moderation and modesty; its stoicism; its insistance on a certain sense of reserve; and its insistance on common sense and pragmatism.

Much has been written about Kipling’s attitude towards imperialism and the apparent racism found in his prose and poetry: was Kipling merely critiquing racist attitudes or exhibiting them himself? That aside, no such controversy exists about the didactic, or instructional If. In our times, it is regarded as a popular classic of English literature; lines from the poem even appear over the player’s entrance to the center court at Wimbledon – a poignant reflection of its abiding inspiration.

As traditional canons of beauty and behaviour give way to a culture of crass consumption, shallowness and mediocrity, the poem distills to us the loftier human virtues. The poem presupposes that true manhood (or womanhood, for that matter) is rooted, not in material advancement, but in moral behaviour and ethical living. So, with these few introductory passages, there is little else left to be said except read, enjoy, be inspired, and suffer the immortal wound that is If:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And – which is more – you'll be a Man, my son!

Was it Ibn Taymiyyah's concoction? Is this division an innovation?

Read the discussion here: tawhid.pdf

Man: the Social Creature
In classical Arabic, the notion of Man as a social creature is etched into the very word for man, insan, which – according to one of the two lexical views – has its root in the word, anisa: to be friendly, sociable, genial. Raghib al-Asbahani, one of the premiere classical Arabic lexicalists, says of its etymology: “It is said that he is called this because he was created with a nature to not be able to establish his affairs save by being sociable with others. This is why it is said that man is civil, or social, by nature (al-insan madani bi’l-tab‘).”[1]

Ibn Taymiyyah, another medieval jurist, addresses the sociological phenomena of man, spot-lighting: “The welfare of people can never be perfected, not in this life nor in the next, save with society; mutual aid; and mutual co-operation, so as to procure benefit and ward off harm. This is why man is said to be social by nature. So when men group together there must be things they must undertake so as to procure their welfare, and things they must avoid because of the harms they entail. They will, therefore, obey someone who commands these [desired] objectives and proscribes the harmful … Thus the Prophet, peace be upon him, ordered his nation to appoint authorities over themselves, and to instruct these authorities to render back things held in trust to their rightful owners and that when they judge between people, they judge justly.[2] He ordered them to obey those in authority as part of obedience to God, Exalted is He.”[3]

He then cites the following prophetic saying: “When three people go out on a journey, let one of them be put in charge.”[4] And also: “It is unlawful for three men to be in a desert area without having one of them be put in command.”[5]

He then concludes: “Now since the smallest of groups and the most limited of societies are obliged to put someone in overall authority, the same must apply when greater numbers are involved.”[6]

British Muslim Leadership
The implications of this religious and rational imperative for Muslims in Britain (equally applicable to Muslims in America and Europe) will not be lost on the reader. The question of who can best represent the diverse communities of Muslims living here in Britain is one that stokes fierce debate and controversy. Regretably, it has also given rise to a plethora of inter-Muslim invectives. Yet amidst this quagmire of contention a consensus seems to be emerging about what type of leadership British Muslims wish to see representing their hopes, aspirations and interests.

This leadership must be one that understands Britain and its society: its history, institutions, culture and collective identity. Moreover, such leadership must be, as far as possible, local; indigenous; British born and bred, such that it is part and parcel of the social fabric, and so that society at large may better relate to it. More importantly, if leadership is indigenous there is often a deeper sense of commitment that may not otherwise emerge if the engagement is borne simply out of a sense of ‘duty’.

The leadership should not only work for the welfare of Muslim communities,[7] it must, of necessity, work for the welfare of society in general. “None of you [truly] believes,” informs a famous hadith, “until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.”[8] No less that Imam al-Nawawi explained, “It is preferred to understand this as a general brotherhood so that it includes the non-Muslim and Muslim alike.”[9]

Such an outlook accords with the Qur’an and its dual address: “O you who believe – ya ayyuhal-ladhina amanu, and: “O humanity – ya ayyuha’l-nas.” Shaykh Bin Bayyah, a distinguished jurist of the contemporary age, explained to an American Muslim audience how: “We have to maintain those things that are particular to us as a community, but we must also recognize that there are other things that are not particular to us, but instead are general to the human condition that we can partake in [...] We have to maintain our roots. We have deep roots in our faith, but at the same time we have to be open.”[10]

The leadership must focus on domestic responsibilities and obligations and not allow them to be overshadowed by foreign agendas peripheral (or irrelevant) to the British Muslim context or priorities. Yet at the same time, since it is part of a transnational ummah, it cannot be indifferent to matters of global Muslim concern. Most certainly, leadership of British Muslims should in no way be under the ‘patronage’ of foreign governments or their funds; or even foreign Islamic movements.

This raises the rather complex question about the relation of such leadership to government. Should it remain aloof from government, with the likelihood of being politically marginalised? Should it take on the semblance of a grassroots, activist-like movement? Or should it seek to gain government’s ear? One thing is certain, which is that any leadership perceived as being ‘fed’ by government, or too pally pally with it, stands in danger of alienating itself from the Muslim masses and exposing itself to the charge of being a sort of “house Negro” – to borrow Malcolm X’s phrase. Then there is the concern of government’s friendly embrace which can so easily morph into a rib-crushing bear hug! Whatever be the case, it does not behove a believer to be a mere armchair critic. An ancient Arabic proverb recalls: “Either lessen your criticism or fill in the gap.” Either something better than what currently exists be brought to the table, or else working to improve existing institutions of leadership becomes the obligation. Beyond that, supplication and silence is the approach required if we are to steer clear of acting like rabble-rousers or sowers of schism and sedition.

Imam al-Sa‘di stated towards the end of the first half of the twentieth century: “[T]his endevour to unify the Muslims and this appeal to effect reconciliation between them is the best of deeds. It is, in this age, better than being engaged in [optional] fasting or prayer. It is also from the greatest and most important forms of jihad in God’s path.” [11] Furthermore: “Muslims are required to not let differences between them in regard to their various schools of thought, or in [issues of] leadership, politics or personal interests, become an obstacle against them actualising religious brotherhood and unity. Instead, they should make all such differences and partial interests subordinate to this great principle.”[12]

Any leadership of the British Muslim communities must, if it wishes to remain true to the essence of the faith, provide sound ethical and spiritual leadership; the least of which is that it should keep at bay the tendency to exploit each and every religious issue in order for it to gain political mileage.

How it engages as well as articulates the anger, frustration and alienation that presently characterises a large swathe of Britain’s young Muslims will be a key factor in determining just how genuinely representative such leadership is of the nation’s one and a half plus million Muslims. Above all, British Muslim leadership must set-out a clear vision for Islam in our contemporary society: a vision, to quote Abdal-Hakim Murad, that must be “rooted in immediate and sincere concern for human welfare under a compassionate God”

Notes
1. Mufradat Alfaz al-Qur’an (Damascus: Dar al-Qalam, 2002), p.94; under the entry of ins. Interestingly, the Qur’an has it [12:109]: We only sent before you men to whom We reveal, of the people of the cities.
2. Cf. Qur’an 4:58.
3. Majmu’ al-Fatawa (Riyadh: Dar ’Alam al-Kutub, 1991), vol.28, p.62.
4. Abu Dawud, Sunan, no.2607.
5. Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, no.13375.
6. Majmu’ al-Fatawa, vol.28, p.65.
7. It is more accurate to speak about British Muslim communities than about a single, monolithic ‘community’. Currently, Britain’s Muslims are made-up of 56 nationalities, speaking 70 languages, and are spread over 1,200 mosques.
8. Al-Bukhari, Sahih, no.13.
9. Sharh Arba’in al-Nawawiyyah (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyyah, 2001), p.59.
10. Cited in T.J. Winter, British Muslim Identity: Past, Problems, Prospects (Cambridge: The Muslim Academic Trust, 2003), p.15.
11. Al-Siyasat al-Shar’iyyah (London: Dar al-Ifta Office, 1990), p.8.
12. ibid., p.13.

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