This article doesn’t quite belong to this forum … but I don’t see it fit anywhere else either. Anyway, it was an interesting read:
In search of Islamic solutions —Ishtiaq Ahmed
Munir Report of 1954 most famously made the observation that no two ulema of even the same sect could agree on the definition of a Muslim. How are we then going to say that agreement on an authentic Islamic Universal Declaration of Human Rights or a Women’s Rights Charter or something similar is possible if only we look into authentic Islamic sources
A frequent argument by Muslim intellectuals is that while Muslim societies badly need to reform, modernise and catch up with the rest of the world, the changes involved should emanate from within and happen at a ‘natural’ pace, in their own time. Any achievements through imitating other societies, especially Western societies, according to such thinking, will lack legitimacy for Muslims. Only authentic Islamic formulation will do.
Prima facie, such thinking appears to be quite reasonable. There can be no denying that reforms that issue from within the world of Islam would have greater authenticity for Muslims. I believe, however, that such reasoning is founded on a false premise. The adherents of this position incorrectly assume a monolithic Islamic culture, free from internal tensions and conflicts of belief and interpretation. All we have to do is to apply our faculties to it and cull out reforms that would automatically go to the hearts and minds of Muslims.
Nothing of the sort has ever been possible because there is no dearth of sectarian and doctrinal disputes in Muslim history. One can actually say that until the beginning of the 18th century nobody seriously thought in terms of reform. Traditional Islamic societies were considered just as long as the ruler nominally upheld the supremacy of the Sharia. Restlessness and dissatisfaction with the status quo first began to be expressed in the 18th century when the Wahhabi movement sprang up from deep inside the Nejd desert of present-day Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabis were fired by a passionate zeal to expurgate what they thought were un-Islamic accretions. They wanted to restore undefiled Unitarian, strictly monotheistic Islam. The Islamic world was still strong and independent so they cannot be seen as having been under pressure from a domineering Western culture.
The reforms they introduced where they won over sheikhs and tribal chiefs hardly touched the traditional social or legal structure. At most, they succeeded in suppressing the cult of the saints, banning music and some minor deviations. Most Muslim societies were too complex and culturally variegated to be transformed into austere Wahhabi ones. It is no wonder therefore that except for the fact that the current rulers of Saudi Arabia have enormous wealth at their disposal and therefore play an important role in the Muslim world and in world politics, the Wahhabi doctrines have been only marginally established in Muslim societies.
The era of modernistic Islamic reform from within, but largely in response to the ascendant Western civilisation, began with Jamaluddin Afghani. His contemporary Sir Syed Ahmed Khan tried his own radical type of naturalistic approach to Islam. Both rejected each other’s approach and became bitter adversaries. The Deoband school (founded 1867) emerged as a reaction to the radical modernism of Sir Syed. It also distanced itself from the traditional Ahle Sunnat who had indigenised Islam by a combination of Islamic beliefs and popular Indian practices such as faith in holy men’s intercession with God, reliance on talismans to work miracles, the use of music and ecstatic dance to induce rapturous trance and so on. Deobandi reformism remained scholastic and therefore of little relevance to the challenges of the modern age.
Allama Iqbal, Abul Kalam Azad, Abul Aala Maududi, and Ghulam Ahmad Pervaiz, one can say, belong to the broad category of reformers in the Indian subcontinent. They were not trained as clerics and were therefore able to experiment with more eclectic versions of Islamic reform. Even Mirza Ghulam Ahmad started as a Sunni reformer. He ended up, however, founding his own theology of Ahmadiyyat. I need not emphasise that even among those from the above list who are considered Sunnis — and that includes everyone except Mirza Ghulam Ahmad — there is hardly any agreement on how to achieve authentic reform that all Muslims could accept. Munir Report of 1954, which looked into the causes of the anti-Ahmadiyya violence in the Punjab, most famously made the observation that no two ulema of even the same sect could agree on the definition of a Muslim. The statement referred to the main Sunni scholars summoned by the court to give their views on that subject.
How are we then going to say that agreement on an authentic Islamic Universal Declaration of Human Rights or a Women’s Rights Charter or something similar is possible if only we look into authentic Islamic sources? Much worse, we have to come to terms with the question whether or not an Islamic Universal Declaration of Human Rights, agreed upon by some people, would truly be a consistent instrument?
An Islamic Universal Declaration of Human Rights does indeed exist and most Muslim governments have accepted it in some informal manner. But, a careful examination of the document shows that it is a typical case of claw-back clauses: what you give with one hand you take away with the other. For example, the Declaration states over and over again that freedom of religion will be enjoyed within limits imposed by Islam. What these limits actually entail is not clear at all. Many Muslim states do not allow Muslims to change their religion but their Muslim citizens are free to preach their faith to non-Muslims and convert them. From a human rights point of view this approach is discriminatory.
A comparative study of Christian societies will tell us that similar difficulties cropped up when Christians started reforming within a religious framework. The result was a split between Catholics and Protestants and further splits between Protestant sects. None of them came up with a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was finally adopted in 1948, it was by lay representatives of various states. It appealed to the reason and conscience of humankind. All of us stand to gain if we add compassion and solidarity to them. I prefer such an approach to human rights over wasting time on dubious ‘culturally authentic’ solutions.
The author is an associate professor of Political Science at Stockholm University. He is the author of two books. His email address is [email protected]