Muslims, Islam and the Social Crisis
By Dr Nazir Khaja
Islamic Information Service
Los Angeles, CA
Religious practices emerge gradually over centuries in constant interaction with social and political transformations. The aspect of religion as a lens of social development and responsibility, which Islam greatly emphasizes in the Qur’an, seems to have long been overlooked in Muslim societies. The Qur’an lays great emphasis on religion as a source of social-order based on justice and yet this has remained unattainable in Muslim societies.
Islam from its beginning claimed to be a religion about faith and reform; it laid great emphasis on acquisition of knowledge as means of deepening ones faith and understanding of the world. The latter seems to have been entirely overlooked in recent Muslim history and experience. Without a cognitive attitude, as the Qur’an demands, Muslims continue to fail in their responsibility to uphold its great ideals and have fallen in decline.
Due to the weakness of civil society organizations that characterizes many Muslim societies power is liable to fall by default to the military or, a state controlled by a kinship group bound by tribal loyalties and created and supported by state-appointed clerics and by others from the outside whose strategic interest they serve.
Demagoguery and sloganeering is widely prevalent. An often-heard slogan, “Islam is the answer” among the Muslims, ironically raises more questions than answers that the Muslims need badly at this time. This trend to give mere lip service to Islam without substantive work to actualize its scope is an important reason for the stagnation of Muslim societies.
The much needed actions, organization, and institutions that are needed to uphold such a weighty idea are generally lacking in Muslim societies.
The social fabric of most Muslim societies remains in tatters. The imbalances that we see between the extremes of wealth and poverty, between the most highly educated minority and the majority lacking in education, the treatment of minorities living amidst them, lack of social network for aging population, unfair or non-existent labor laws which exploit wage earners, are but few examples. The stratification of society based on these inequalities is actually now the existing norm of most Muslim societies. Despite the emotional attachment and lip service, the concept of “Umma” or community still awaits fulfillment in Muslim history.
The unfinished "Arab Spring” rolls on and it will not be a surprise if it is overwhelmed by a "long hot summer”. Yet, hopes are for a change that will empower the people. The Islamic parties in Tunisia and Egypt are assuming power in the name of Islam. The question on everyone’s mind is how these parties will blend Islam into a democratic framework or vice versa. The change of Muslims societies from a loose union of crowns into a single nation or communities is a difficult challenge.
Muslims until recently have remained silent spectators, allowing a few among them to claim that they only are the interlocutors on behalf of the silent majority to speak for everyone and Islam. Members of an inward-looking, xenophobic clerical establishment, obsessed with issues of purity and pollution, have become the guardians of tradition and bearers of popular identity
Authoritarian culture has become the hallmark of Muslim societies in which submission to authority is stressed upon as religious virtue. This attitude and idea remain ingrained in the minds of even highly educated Muslims living in free societies, preventing them from generating and participating in a much needed discussion and deliberation on hot-button issues like the Sharia, Separation of ‘church and state', and the contextual understanding of the term “secularism”.
The propagated view and understanding among Muslim masses that only Arabic language is the portal through which one can enter to establish authority among them is yet another hurdle that has buttressed the claim to authority by the few and has restricted the framework for discussion regarding Islam. Cherry picking through history and the over-assertive and under-evidenced argument that Muslims offer in defense of their behavior in many instances and also of Islam is leaving all bereft and bewildered. These attitudes and ideas born out of the static understanding and interpretations of their own faith remain as a cause of dissonance between democracy and Islam.
A logical resolution of this paradox would be a formal separation of powers between religion and state, where the religious leadership does not interfere in the affairs of State and is prevented from exercising executive authority. The
prevailing understanding among Muslims that stands in the way to this says that the separation between religion and politics is foreign to Islam and also that Islam is more than a religion, it is a culture. There has to be as a necessary first step, willingness to adapt theology to contemporary culture.
The critical issue for now is the articulation of religious identity within the public sphere and therefore the question of secularism which contrary to the popular understanding among Muslims and also some others is not denying God or rejecting their faith. If Christianity has been able to recast itself as one religion among others in a secular space, why would this be impossible for Islam?
There is therefore an urgent need for a generous amount of 'deconstruction' of contending historical narratives and claims entirely based on partisan views among Muslims that are mainly informed by their need to assert their own national or tribal identity, group or genders` hegemony , and cultural preferences/practices, but claimed under the banner of “Authentic Islam”. These contradictions, claims and counter-claims have remained a major source of conflict and confusion for themselves and others and have turned Islam into a more dogmatic and exclusivist faith. Also, a major part of the dysfunction between state and religion is the rise of Muslim extremism.
Religion matters, but Muslims must now concentrate on what it is and how their faith is involved in contemporary social and political issues. Ritual practices and religious worldview with firm moral underpinnings must release for them rational imperatives that help the establishment of a just society. Other than the worship of one God, the Qur’an is emphatic on human dignity and justice. Because of rigid adherence to form rather than substance the Muslims are failing to engage directly, deliberately and consistently to produce the desired change within their societies.
It is obvious that there is a crisis of confidence among Muslims. This is why it seems that Islam remains least influenced by liberal and secular values and therefore least open to new ideas and change. It appears that Muslims are afraid about survival in a secular world; they are afraid of assimilation. Many see “a radical otherness” to their own self-understanding in the world they now live in.
Unless the Muslims come forward to demonstrate the reconstructive power of their religious belief to overcome the social inequalities in their societies and not remain in denial Islam will continue to be under siege from within and from the outside. There has to be an equal, if not greater, emphasis on saving society instead of souls. They need to reclaim the understanding that Islam, as a civilization, is more than a set of rituals. It’s ‘what binds Muslims together and to others.
There is no need for Muslims to romanticize or reject the past but only learn from it. A useful orientation to confront the outdated interpretation and understanding is critically needed. Muslims must remind themselves that social context shapes religion’s social manifestations. The prevailing trend in Muslim societies of authoritative control that appeals only to tradition and refuses to justify itself by other criteria has to be changed by open reasoned argument or by standards of justice and liberty for the greatest number.
All of this is not to say that Islam needs to change but only that Muslims must. Islam should be what it was from its earliest, a religion of faith and reform – that is the challenge for contemporary Muslims. nazir.khaja@gmail.com
