Irshad Manji & Project Ijtihad

Is Islamic Jihad beginning to fizzle out? The announcement of Sheikh Mohammad Hassan, head of the Jammu and Kashmir Jamaat-e-Islami, earlier this month that his organisation would participate in the Assembly election and the heavy electoral blow dealt by the Awami National Party founded by late Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khar (Frontier Gandhi) on fundamentalist coalition Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal in the Pakistani election in North West Frontier Province and Balochistan are enough to trigger this question which assumes that Muslims will be getting wearied of Jihadi Islam.
This assumption may sound presumptuous at the moment. But signs of a new breeze of freethinking among intellectual sections of Muslims cannot be underestimated. In the forefront of this reform-minded and sceptical section are a few courageous women: Ayan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Irshad Manji and Taslima Nasreen. You had better turn your back on these writers if you are a Muslim who has a chip on your shoulder about the supremacy of your religion. Because that is exactly what these writers challenge. Irshad Manji stands out because, unlike the others, she believes that Islam can be reformed and made compatible with contemporary spirit of democracy.
Her book The Trouble With Islam Today, written in the form of an open letter to fellow Muslims is a critique of Islam in its present form. To quote her words, she is taking the trouble of launching a global campaign for rediscovering Islam’s lost tradition of Ijtihad (independent reasoning). Nothing else could have explained, according to her, the emergence of 135 schools of thought in Islam in the early centuries of its history
Islam became a dogmatic and closed religion that it is today, she argues, as a result of its obsession with the `glory of its founding moment’, a trait that began after Islam led by Arabs started facing defeats in battles against non-Arabs including Crusaders, Berbers, Mangols and Ottoman Turks. Gates of Ijtihad were closed by 12 th century and mullahs became gatekeepers. Bin Laden’s brand of Jihadi Islam is a re-enactment of this founding moment: “New York City is bin Laden’s pre-Islamic Mecca. To him, World Trade Centre workers were conscious combatants in the march of secular materialism”. (p. 165)
You want to know the impact of this gate-closing on the Arab world? A UN report in 2003 revealed that over the past 1000 years the entire Arab world had translated only as many books as Spain translated every year.
Irshad Manji has been dubbed an iconoclast, rebel and self-proclaimed Muslim Refusenik. She was four years old when her family migrated from Uganda to Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver, in 1972 when large number of South Asian Muslims escaped from that country after Idi Amin launched `Africa for the blacks’ policy. Daughter of a violent father and a mother who was struggling to sustain the household, Manji started asking difficult questions to her madrassa teacher whose stock reply was `Read the Quran’. Instead of leaving Islam, she wants to `discover Islam’s personality’, she says.
She has found post-9/11 Muslim narrative that Islam has been hijacked is an excuse for mainstream Muslms to evade self-criticism. The book traces the birth of modern Jihadi Islam to the humiliation suffered by the secular and socialist Arab establishment led by Egypt in the 1967 war with Israel. Political Islam stepped in after secular Arab governments suffered defeat and it was followed by a world-wide campaign, bankrolled by Saudi oil money, for revival of the Wahabi brand of puritan Islam to prepare for the final victory.
Manji says that tribal mindset of desert Arabs is dominant in Islam today. Muslims are being taught to become religious `robots’ by a system driven by this mindset. Prevalence of practices such as wearing purdah by Muslim women across the world is an example of what she calls Arab cultural imperialism.
Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish and Taslima Nasreen are sceptical of any attempt to reform Islam. Islam cannot be reformed as long as it claims supremacy over other religions and keeps the Quran and the Hadith outside the purview of criticism, according to them. For Manji, the Operation Ijtihad involves questioning `superstition that we can’t question the Quran’. She exudes the confidence that the operation can restore Islam’s humanity.

Obsession with spirituality

I am not an admirer of the word `spirituality' which is often being bandied about by people having religious agenda. That word kept coming to my mind tonight after I gulped two drinks (Mallu style, of course) at a party I would have otherwise skipped had it not been for virtues of socialising. I liked whisky but the crowd was boring and I felt like a pigeon among the cats (or is it the other way round?). I never drank so fast, fastidious as I am in both my choice of company and drinks. On my way back home, my mind appeared to have stuck to that word I hate. Then I tried to divert my sudden obsession with `spirituality' by thinking about my best friend's recipe for making instant biriyani. That recipe defies all formal recipes that you find in cookery books. Her reciple conjures up a biriyani that exists in the realm of imagination. As perfect as it should be. May be in Plato's Republic.
I felt that there is spirituality involved in making the sort of biriyani that she makes. The inner and instinctive understanding in a person who makes biriyani (or any other food item, for that matter) of proportions of its ingredients is spiritual and I use the word for want of a better word. Okey?
So what exactly is spiritualiy? I don't know. But that question raises a series of other questions. Is spirituality the sole monopoly of religions? If it is, which religion has greater claim to spirituality? Who will be the arbiter who can testify to that claim? If somebody can answer these questions, pleaaaaaaase do it. If my questions sound silly, blame the whisky and not me.

Kosovo and Beethovan's Ode To Joy

Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia endorsed by Kosovo's parliament in a special session today is a foregone conclusion. Kosovo has been part of Serbia from Serbian perspecive, but this erstwhile province of erstwhile Yugoslavia has been a protectorate of the United Nations since 1999 when NATo forces airbombed Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic into submission ending Serbian ethnic cleansing in Kosovo that left nearly 850,000 ethnic Albanians as refugees in neighbouring Albania and Macedonia.
I was overwhelmed with joy after I watched BBC report on the declaration of independence of Kosovo whose population of two million people includes 90 per cent ethnic Albanians (Muslims) and 10 per cent ethnic Serbs (Christians). The European Union and the United States (the country which, according to Islamists, is out to destroy Islam!) are expected to recognise the newborn nation much to the chagrin of Serbia and its patron Russia. Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci's announcement that Kosovo would be a democratic country that respected the rights of all ethnic communities was followed by nightlong partying, celebration and concerts. An estimated 80 tonnes of fireworks were used to celebrate the independence of the new country that perhaps would be a finale of the dissolution of former Yugoslavia as federation cemented by communism.What would you expect the top leaders of Kosovo to be doing tonight to celebrate the independence? Going to mosques and thanking God for the independence from `infidel' Serbia? No. They gathered in a sports hall in Pristina where Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra played Beethovan's `Ode to Joy'. Wonderful, isn't it? TV channels show people in Kosovo carrying flags of the EU, the U.S. and Albania. Cheers to the new nation.

On `Parzania'

The horror of Gujarat genocide of 2002 came back to my mind when I watched the movie Parzania made by Rahul Dholakia. The profound tragedy of hundreds of victims of the backlash in Gujarat following the incident of burning of the coaches of Sabarmati Express in Godhra on February 27, 2002 in which 59 Hindu pilgrims were charred to death forms the backdrop of the story of the Parsi couple in Ahamedabad, Cyrus Peethawala (Naseeruddin Shah) and Shernaz (Sarika) searching for their 10-year old son who has been missing since violence broke out in the city. Based on a real-life story, the film unravels the personal tragedy of the middle-class family of Cyrus. A young American, who is in Ahamedabad at that time to study Gandhiji and becomes a close friend of Cyrus, is meant to be a character to give an outsider perspective on the carnage that happened in the land of Gandhiji. The outburst of emotions by the Shernaz and other victims at the hearing of the Human Rights Commission makes a cathartic effect on them and the audience that watches the movie. Cyrus also undergoes a nine-day religious purification ritual from which he comes back with a sense of reconciliation.
I am not a film enthusiast, but I cannot ignore some deep flaws in the way in which the subject has been treated in the movie. The melodramatic treatment of the personal tragedy with its emphasis on heightened emotions leaves the viewers struggling to contain tears flowing from their eyes. That shows the absence aesthetic sense of balance in the film.
It is this balance that marks out The Devil’s Arithmetic, a movie based on a novel on Holocaust written by Jane Yolen. The movie narrates the story of a Jewish girl living in modern America being mentally transported to the Nazi-occupied Poland of 1942 and transformed into a 13-year old Jewish girl from a family that experiences the tragedy at the concentration camp. The movie is a poem in celluloid as it treats the profundity of the Jewish tragedy without taking recourse to melodrama. Your eyes may not shed a single drop of tears while watching it, but you will be gripped by the enormity of the Holocaust. It is one of the best movies I have ever seen in my lifetime.

There is no love in general...

Love is a panacea for all the maladies that keep the people divided, thus spake FG when we were half way through that nightlong gathering of our GANG. Being still under the spell of her interaction with a venerable Gandhian during her recent visit to Vedchi, a village near in Surat in Gujarat, she insisted that love alone was the weapon to battle hatred and violence that deepened the divide between communities, especially Hindus and Muslims.
All hell broke out when she said this and I was among those who refused to take her prescription of love. Why? Before trying to explicate my position on FG’s arguments, let me summarise what she tried to drive home. Politicians, she says, are the tribe that keeps the people divided and they have learned this from the colonial British. She quotes Narayan Desai, the Gandhian she met, as saying misconceptions (between Hindus and Muslims) can be dispelled if the channels of communications are kept open. “Keep your mind and heart open. Welcome Muslims into your life and homes…[then] our fears dissolve,” she quotes the Gandhian: “I may not be able to stop the horrors committed by others but at least I can refuse to be a participant? I can disagree and continue to maintain that opening your home and heart to people is the best way to overcome the fear of the unknown.”
You may not like the romantic and idealistic tone of FG, but there is hardly anything in what she said that has to be opposed tooth and nail. Absolutely nothing. But still I was among those who swooped on her and countered her arguments. Why? I will try to list out my arguments for debate:
1. Blaming politicians in general for every problem facing the country is a sort of escapism. I believe that there is no politician or political party in general. Living in a democracy always involves the need for making a political choice between one leader from the other, one party from the other. If I am in Gujarat, I will cast my vote against Modi and I have valid reasons for that. I will not abstain from voting. I will exercise my democratic rights to see him out of power. Those who voted him back to power have equally valid reasons for doing so. But that does not mean that my choice and their choice are morally equivalent. Expecting perfect guys in politics is nothing short of Utopian. But there is a difference between a party that incited passion to have a mosque demolished by its cadres and a party that has a dynastic streak which you don’t like but proclaims its commitment to secularism which you like.
2. I believe that democracy works on the concept of tolerance and not on love. I cannot love a person whose views are diametrically opposed to mine. But I will tolerate him as long as s/he doesn’t kill me for my views. Love and understanding are always possible among secular people. A devout Muslim who believes that his/her religion is the only true religion cannot love and understand people belonging to other religions. So is a devout Christian, Jew or any devout person belonging to any other absolutist faith
3. Justice is an important tool for healing wounds that divide the peoples. Justice brings reconciliation. Preaching love and mutual understanding between Hindus and Muslims cannot be an answer to communal polarisation. Culprits from either side of the divide should be brought to justice. There is a news report in today’s The Hindu on the impact after Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered public apology for all past injustices against aborigines. Such sublime effort to bring reconciliation by political establishment is far more effective and important than preaching love and compassion.
4. What has been happening over the past 10 days or so in Maharashtra as a result of hatred and passion incited by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena has once again proved the importance of the political establishment (read government) that acts decisively against perpetrators. Well-intentioned people like Narayan Desai who “may not able to stop the horrors committed by others but refuse to be participants” offer no solace to thousands of migrant workers from Bihar who are fleeing Maharashtra in the wake of the MNS-sponsored violence.
5. As important as the political establishment is the civil society which is defined by London School of Economics Centre for Civil Society as “the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values”. A country with strong civil society can always expose the designs of exclusivist or chauvinistic thugs (Thackerays et al) and fundamentalist groups (like those that are baying for the blood of Taslima Nasreen) for what they are.
I feel sorry that FG felt she was the victim of the ‘mayhem’ that day. We were not attacking her ideals of peace and harmony. We were just trying to show the vulnerability of her wishful thinking that everything would be beautiful if people discover and apply love to sort out all problems. I believe that there is no love in general. It is always specific. It is this specificity of love that allows us to enjoy our debates, fights, arguments and counter-arguments, and our gatherings. SHALOM.