Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Thursday, June 8, 2017
Ramadan as Time for Intellectual Jihad
( also published on the ABC RELIGION AND ETHICS WEBSITE in a slightly different version)
As it is widely known Ramadan is usually understood as time for increasing intensity in ritualistic practice. Most unfortunately, last few Ramadans in particular are also being increasingly connected with acts of senseless violence and terrorism perpetuated worldwide by groups like ISIS ( or individuals inspired by their beliefs) whose perverted interpretation of Islam/Islamic history views suicide bombing as especially meritorious acts of martyrdom and piety during this Holy Month. It is my contention, however, that Ramadan should foremost be a time for increased intellectual practice or intellectual jihad.
As it is widely known Ramadan is usually understood as time for increasing intensity in ritualistic practice. Most unfortunately, last few Ramadans in particular are also being increasingly connected with acts of senseless violence and terrorism perpetuated worldwide by groups like ISIS ( or individuals inspired by their beliefs) whose perverted interpretation of Islam/Islamic history views suicide bombing as especially meritorious acts of martyrdom and piety during this Holy Month. It is my contention, however, that Ramadan should foremost be a time for increased intellectual practice or intellectual jihad.
The Islamic intellectual tradition, including its
fountainheads the Qur’an and Sunna, stress this intellectual jihad in myriad of
ways. For example, one of the most repeatedly occurring themes in the Qur’an is
that of intellectual reflection and contemplation (tadabbur /tafakkur). Sayings
( regardless of their actual ‘authenticity as per classical Islamic sciences) such as ‘The ink of a scholar is holier than
the blood of a martyr ‘ and ‘ An hour of (intellectual) reflection/contemplation
is better than a one thousand years of
worship’ testify to the strong intellectual core of the Islamic tradition that
is in full harmony with the Qur’anic worldview. A good number of Muslim
philosophers, rationalist theologians and jurists, past and present, have also stressed the
intellectually robust nature of the Islamic teachings ( and have often
attracted criticism by strong
anti-intellectual currents in Islam that have always been there).
Furthermore, the injunctions found in the Qur’an and Sunna
pertaining to the performance of rituals are clearly linked to an underlying
rationale ( ‘ila). So we are told (2:183) that
the reason for fasting is to increase our level of God consciousness
(taqwa), that the daily prayer (salat)
is a means to keep us away from indecency/evil (29:45), that the animal sacrifice at time of hajj (qurban)
is purely symbolic in nature (22: 37). We are also told that the legal alms
and charities (zakat) are levied in order to prevent the concentration of
wealth among the rich (57: 7).
It is an
inconvenient and theologically disturbing truth (that I as a believing,
practicing Muslim am still grappling with) that many terrorists and the ISIS affiliated
scholars they follow are ‘very big’ on the ritualistic aspects of Islam such as
fasting and praying ( and even ‘bigger’ on formalistic ones such as beards and turbans) yet they engage in senseless violence and
terrorism. Could this disconnect between
ritualistic cum formalistic piety and their purposes at least in part explain
this theological conundrum? While I do not have an equivocal answer to this
question, the question is, in my view, worth asking and seriously reflecting
on.
It is my considered view that a good number of contemporary
Muslims have lost track of the intellectual jihad aspect of the Islamic
tradition and have prioritised ritualistic and formalistic ‘piety’ over that of intellectual and ethical one. Ramadan is the perfect time to reclaim this
invaluable aspect of our tradition.
Thursday, June 1, 2017
"Imperatives of Progressive Islam" Book launch Talk
Respected Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, a very good evening to all!
First of all, I would like to thank the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural
Research for organising this wonderful event as a celebration of scholarship
and erudition. I would also like to express my gratitude to Associate Professor
Halim Rane for his kind words, the effort and time he put to be with us tonight
and his penetrating insights. I would also like to thank him for his continued
support, especially in relation to my research interests in general, and with
respect to my interest in progressive Islam in particular.
I would like to use
this time to actually not just talk about my book but to make a few general points
with respect to two issues:
1. Importance of
scholarship and its role in making the public more informed on issues of public
concern
2. Address some
common misconceptions about progressive Islam.
Let me start by
saying that in the time of what some have referred to as the post-truth
society, at the time of proliferation of alternative facts, at the time of the
dominance of short news-media cycles and social media platforms there is, in my
view, nothing more important than that the events like one today, that celebrate
careful and critical thought scholarship and erudition, are held and promoted.
It is my hope that this will be continued in the future.
As someone who prides himself to be a
scholar-activist I particularly see value in the production of high quality
scholarship as an important intellectual
weapon, and I have chosen the word weapon intentionally, to countering
poorly informed and shallow thinking based on unjustified,
factually incorrect and, in the final analysis, irresponsible
claims that circulate in some primarily non-academic circles. As someone who has been publishing on various aspects of contemporary
Islam for a decade and is also engaged in a variety of non-academic discourses
on it, I am only too aware of the harmful effects these kinds of discourses can
and do have on societies.
Non-conservative
forms of Islam have often been marginalised both in scholarship (apart from as
instruments for various political agendas) and, at times, ridiculed by both
certain sections of Muslim and non-Muslim communities for being ‘not Muslim
enough’ or for being ‘diluted’ if not far-fetched or ‘outlandish’ versions of
‘true’ Islam. One the one hand, that ‘true’ Islam is portrayed by some
non-Muslims as inevitably misogynist,
barbaric and anti-intellectual, rejecting modern values and international
norms. On the other hand, conservative, not to mention puritan Muslim groups,
without actually engaging properly with the theories underpinning, in this case
progressive Islam, erroneously reject it
as something ‘western’ or ‘secular’.
Needless to say that
these kind of critiques are not only based on intellectual laziness,
apologetics and lack of erudition but
that they utterly fail in doing justice to the theory
of progressive Islam as presented in not only in the book of mine we showcase today but
also my first book published six years ago that grew
out of my Ph.D. thesis which is a
careful and systematic engagement of progressive Islam’s conceptualisation of and approach to the Islamic intellectual
tradition and its hermeneutical theory in particular.
Let us go back to the
claim that progressive Islam is ‘secular’. Putting aside issues pertaining to
the theorising the concept of secularism as, for example, discussed at length by scholars such as
Charles Taylor, those who subscribe to
this view would be surprised to find out
that in my book on the imperatives of progressive Islam I have used the
words ‘secularity’ , ‘secular’, ‘secularise’ and ‘secularism’ once only
respectively .
In my first book I explicitly stated that:
“ it
is clear that progressive Muslims do not subscribe to commonly employed
dichotomies such as, tradition vs. modernity, secularism vs. religion, or
simplistic generalization such as modernity =Western or Judeo- Christian
intellectual /civilizational tradition”.( P.124)…
Elsewhere
in the same book I also argued as follows:
“it is important to note that
progressive Muslims are critical
of the metanarratives underpinning
classical modernity and the Age of
Enlightenment characterized by the
notions of a universal legislative, secular,
and objective reason and objective
truth. Instead, they advocate what
Sheyla Benhabib would describe as a
weak form postmodernism where
truth is sought in a dialectical
relationship between revelation, reason, and
the sociohistorical context in
which both are embedded.
According to this view,
[r]ationality and belief, human rights and divine obligation, individual and social
justice, collective reason and religious morality, human mind and divine
revelation are living peacefully together.”,p.135.
The same arguments
apply in relation to the concept or idea of progressive Islam being ‘western’
(needless to say that the conceptual foundations of a western civilisation have
been seriously questioned by scholars like K. A. Appiah).
In my first book I
have provided a detailed discussion on how progressive Muslim thought
approaches the concept of modernity and its relationship with the “West’ where
I argued as follows:
Progressive Muslims, thus,
subscribe to the view that the
Socio-political and cultural
processes that have brought about epistemological
and ontological changes in the
Western worldview and resulted
in the advent of modernity as we
know it today are considered a result of
a dynamic process of civilizational
interaction and mutual construction
through transcultural,
trans-political, and trans-social spaces. Additionally,
progressive Muslims believe that
this late modern episteme could be also
applied within the framework of the
sociocultural context of the Muslim
majority societies resulting in the
genesis of another distinct type of
modernity.
( p.136).
So if progressive Islam is not ‘western’ or ‘secular ‘what is it? In a
nutshell Progressive Islam is but a contemporary articulation of Islamic
humanistic and cosmopolitan values, beliefs and practices. It is an approach to
the Islamic tradition based on:
1. creative, critical and innovative thought based on epistemological openness and methodological fluidity,
2. Islamic liberation theology,
3. social and gender justice ,
4. a human rights based approach to Islamic tradition,
5. rationalist and contextualist approaches to Islamic theology and ethics, and
6. affirmation of religious pluralism
In actual fact these six points are the main subject matter of the book
that we are highlighting tonight.
Finally, some people might ask as to why I employ the term progressive in
progressive Islam/progressive Muslim thought. While I have provided a systematic
and detailed discussion of what this means from a philosophical, epistemological and
methodological perspective in my academic writings on the subject matter let me
as my final point, outline briefly four reasons as to why this is the case :
Reason
one
: Quran and Sunna were progressive in approaching ethical and legal issues of
that time by having a more ethical vision beyond what was considered as status
quo and customary ( ma'ruf/ 'urf) ! Progressive Islam wants to stay true to
this vision.
Reason
two:
ethical values like justice and fairness do not remain frozen in time. They, as
collective human experience testifies, in principle are subject to change as
God's creative powers have a direct bearing on our own collective reason and
our collective ethico-moral compass. Our aim is to ever more faithfully
approximate the Divine as source of absolute Beauty, Justice and Mercy and that
is only possible if our ethical systems do not remain frozen ( as in case of
traditionalist/pre-modern based approaches)
and are theorized in such a manner to allow space for progress
/improvement in the never ending quest for ethical perfection. Theory of
progressive Islam does exactly that.
Reason
three: to highlight the strong affinities in the kind of
theologies, interpretational approaches and socio-political and ethical values
that exist among progressive religious/spiritual movements worldwide whose
pillars are affirmation of religious pluralism and strong commitment to social
and gender justice. For example, the Network of Spiritual Progressives.
Reason
four:
For the same reason why we have Sufi Islam, Sunni Islam, Shi'i Islam. It's
about affirming the fact that progressive Islam has its own methodology of
interpretation, its own theological orientation
and its own approach to conceptualising the Islamic intellectual
tradition (that are discussed in my works systematically and in some detail).
Progressive Islam has not had much, if any, concrete
support either from the “West” or from Muslim majority countries so far.
Therefore, I am particularly thankful to those associated with Griffith Centre
for Social and Cultural Research who have organised this even tonight in
helping raise awareness about progressive Islam/progressive Muslim
thought. It is my dream that Griffith University
will, in due course, become the global intellectual and academic hub for
continued growth and theorising of progressive Islam as I am convinced that
progressive Islam has so much to offer to both Muslims and non-Muslim alike.
THANK YOU.
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