September
30, 2005
The Trouble
with Islam Today
Irshad Manji, author of the
book under the above title, has been called a heretic,
a self-despising person, an Islamophobic out to
wage a vendetta on the faith she was born into.
Yet, the 216-page book is compelling, riveting and
thought provoking, despite being no highbrow work
of history or scholarship.
It is as intriguing as the author herself. Take
her very name, Irshad, for instance. This is the
first time to my knowledge at least that a Muslim
girl has been given the name of a boy. She calls
it a ‘unisex’ name - she ought to know,
it is her name. Then, she is a Lesbian and makes
no bones about it. “God has made me and only
God can unravel me”, she contends.
Manji, 37, has earned repute as an experienced journalist,
a lecturer much in demand and a devout human rights
fighter. She is the winner of numerous awards including
Opra Winfrey’s Chutzpah Award for courage,
verve and conviction, and Simon Wiesenthal Award
for valor. She has been hosting a TV program dealing
with the issues of Gays and Lesbians titled Queer
TV as well as the program Big Ideas.
Born in Uganda to a martinet Indian father and a
soft and considerate Egyptian mother, both Muslims,
Irshad arrived in Richmond, B.C., Canada in 1972
along with her parents who were expelled from Uganda
by Idi Amin. She was just four years of age. She
was a student leader at school and in college. And,
her parents sent her to a Muslim madarsa attached
to a mosque for several years to enable her to be
educated in the religion of her family.
That is where her confusion and conflict began.
Her teacher, evidently an honorary worker not well
versed in religion, was unable to satisfy her questioning
mind. Following the ‘my way or the highway’
dogma, he made her quit the class. But she continued
to study Islam on her own, by borrowing books from
a library, for some 20 years. Naturally, she had
no opportunity to learn Arabic and she had to depend
on the works of orientalists; a list of the books
is given on her website (WWW.Muslim-Refusenik.com)
and at the end of her book.
In a way it is advantageous that her thoughts did
not get steeped into the plethora of literature
on Islam produced during the period 750-1492, the
golden period of Islam’s intellectual, material
and scientific attainments. She has computed this
period to be 500 years, from750 to 1250, but I think
the momentum continued, though it was tapering off
till the fall of Spain in 1492 that also marks the
discovery of America.
She attributes most of the troubles of the Muslim
world to the drying up of the spirit of enquiry,
Ijtehad, by Muslim religious leaders in the 12th
century and those who have followed in their footsteps.
The door of Ijtehad was shut to do away with the
hundreds of different schools of thought that had
cropped up creating a cacophony of dissident voices.
Then, the mystics and Sufis established their own
cadres adhering to mysterious rituals. Yet, as Manji
has pointed out, the end of Ijtehad marked the end
of the dialectics of debates, discussions, syntheses
and consensus. Islam went into a hermitage.
The spirit of enquiry, the distinctive feature of
the Muslim intellectual life was picked up by Christian
reformers, Martin Luther, Calvin and others. Renaissance
and the Industrial Revolution, growth of pure and
applied sciences generated fast forward march of
Europe. Muslim empires of Turkey, Iran and India
commenced their slide down till their territories
and resources were taken over by Western colonialism
and enterprise.
The muzzle over innovation imposed by the mullahs,
the clergy, was so severe that an observatory set
up in Istanbul in 1579 was demolished a year later.
The great Ottoman Empire continued in intellectual
darkness for two more centuries when a printing
press in Istanbul was closed in 1745! Printing press
was an innovation, hence unacceptable to the clergy.
What a plunge from a few centuries before, points
out the author, when Islam led the world in astronomy,
math, medicine, and more.
Manji attribute many of the faults of Muslim communities
in various parts of the world to the emergence of
Wahabism in mid 18th century in collaboration with
the house of Saud. She calls it Fundamentalism and
Desert Islam. She does not mention the positive
attainments of Wahabism – a puritan form of
religion free of ancestor and grave worship and
Sufi practices and sects. The concept that the 32-year
period of the four Caliphs who followed the prophet,
marked the golden era of Islam, is open to question.
Three of the four Caliphs were assassinated and
by Muslims, and the entire period is too short to
serve as the role model for generations to follow.
But that kept the focus of the worldwide Muslim
community on practices followed by Saudi Arabia.
“When people are indoctrinated to believe
that any aspect of the founding moment is sacred”,
argues Manji, “then the faith is destined
to become static, brittle, inhumane”. Arab
culture needs to be separated from Islam as a faith,
she maintains.
Manji is right in her argument that the Muslims
have to throw open the door of Ijtehad, instead
of remaining confined to their own cocoons of tribal
practices, superstitions and unquestioning following
of rituals. A radical reformer, she questions refreshingly
the prevalent concepts, provoking thought and exercising
logic. She eggs on Muslims to do a lot of introspection.
Her tone is urgent, insistent and unmodulated to
the point of being tedious at times. She is unhappy
over the erosion of intellectual curiosity among
Muslims for so many centuries.
She has launched a project for introducing Ijtehad
into the body politics of Muslim societies. A Foundation
has been set up to enable Muslim youth to get together
and exchange views – a cross fertilization
of concepts.
She is also working on measures to empower rural
women through micro loans. This too appears to be
making headway. In Muslim countries a good number
of women are in the field now for securing the rights
of women and fighting against tribal and other traditions
suppressing women.
The devaluation of women is not peculiar to Muslim
societies only. Matter of fact, Islam liberated
women of Arabia. Chinese used to for centuries tie
the feet of young girls in wooden shoes so that
they grew up as physically handicapped women to
remain dependent on their husbands and other men
of the family for the rest of their lives. I have
a vivid recollection of such Chinese ladies whom
I used to see as a young boy in mid 1930s.
In Hindu society, the custom of Satti obligated
the widow to burn alive on the funeral pyre of her
dead husband. That means the wife had no identity
separate from that of her husband. In Arabia female
babies were buried alive till Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
banned the custom. And, in Europe, women were burnt
alive on suspicion of being witches. In Roman Empire
a woman, like a slave, was treated like property.
Enlightenment and progress have gradually eliminated
all these customs. Change for the better can be
witnessed now everywhere. In some Muslim societies,
however, there is still the tradition of honor killings,
bias against homosexuals, defining rape victims
as adulteresses, and punishing adulteresses by stoning.
But there is a strong aversion building up towards
these. And, laws are being framed to eliminate such
malpractices. Irshad Manji need not be over-aggressive
about these, as these practices too would follow
Satti and foot-tying practices. One may disagree
with the author on certain points, but it is a book
worth reading and mulling over.
- arifhussaini@hotmail.com
