Muslim scholar proposes new interpretation of Islam as solution in the fight against Islamic State jihadists .(
AN).
Fighting the Islamic State in Syria
and Iraq (ISIS) group with the QurÊŒÄn is possible. Only the Muslim Holy
Book, not politics or sociology, can offer a real response to radical
Islam and jihadi movements like ISIS, which use shĆ«rÄs as a pretext and
justification for their actions, this according to Abdullahi Ahmed
An-Na'im, a Muslim scholar.
A professor of law in the United States originally from Sudan, Dr
An-Na'im has a deep knowledge of Islamic law.
For him, the way to
reform and opposition to extremist and fanatical movements who use the
Holy Book to justify their actions lies in QurÊŒÄn itself, in its oldest
verses, dating back to Muhammad’s time in Makkah.
The original version of the article that follows was published in The Conversation, an independent news platform sourced from the academic and research community.
The media coverage of the terrorist atrocities of Friday November 13
in Paris would seem to promote an almost mythical image of the Islamic
State (ISIS). What humanity needs, however, is to demystify ISIS as a
criminal organization. And that need is particularly important in my
community – the Muslim community.
The vast majority of Muslims almost certainly (
we do not have exact figures)
feel moral revulsion and outrage about the violence perpetrated by
ISIS. Indeed, Egypt’s top Sunni cleric, to name just one example, was
quick to
denounce the perpetrators of Friday’s “hideous and hateful” attacks.
However, the truth of the matter is that ISIS leaders and supporters
can and do draw on a wealth of scriptural and historical sources to
justify their actions.
Traditional interpretations of Sharia, or Islamic law, approved
aggressive jihad to propagate Islam. They permitted the killing of
captive enemy men. They allowed Jihadis to enslave enemy women and
children, as ISIS did with the
Yazidi women in Syria.
I am a Muslim scholar of Sharia. It is my contention that ISIS' claim
of Islamic legitimacy can be countered only by a viable alternative
interpretation of Islamic law.
Consensus leading to deadlock
The key to understanding the role of Islam in politics is that there
is no one authoritative entity that can establish or change Sharia
doctrine for Muslims on any subject.
There is no equivalent of the Vatican and papal infallibility. How
Sharia is interpreted by the many different communities of Muslims (from
Sunni and Shia to Sufi and Salafi) is, at base, the product of an
intergenerational consensus of the scholars and leaders of each
community.
Islamic belief and practice is fundamentally individual and voluntary
in its nature. A Muslim cannot be accountable for the views and actions
of others.
One positive consequence of this absence of any one religious
authority is the fact that it is possible to contest and reinterpret
Sharia principles.
On the negative side, however, any Muslim can make any claim about
Sharia if he or she can persuade a critical mass of Muslims to accept
it.
One example of this is how Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini used the doctrine of
“wilayat al-faqih” (or guardianship of the jurist) to claim the authority to launch the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.
This was controversial because in doing so, he went against the
consensus that authority for such a decision resided in the person of
the 12th and last “living” Shia Imam, who disappeared (but did not die)
in 874 and, it is believed, will reappear at the end of time as
al-Mahdi.
A more recent example is the
creation of ISIS
by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his self-appointment as Caliph or successor
of the Prophet Muhammed, divinely charged with resurrecting a state
that ended 1,400 years ago.
Things changed in the 10th century
For the first 300 years of its existence, Islamic thought can be
characterized as dynamic and creative, with differing interpretations of
the scriptures being discussed and debated among communities and
generations.
Ijtihad, or independent juridical reasoning, was explicitly endorsed by the Prophet Muhammed.
Some modern Muslims, like the
Sisters in Islam
organization in Malaysia, are exercising ijtihad today to promote the
human rights of women from an Islamic perspective. To those, then, who
accept the Sisters' interpretation, women
are accorded equal rights
according to Sharia. But the Sisters and others like them are in a minority.
By the 10th century, a highly sophisticated body of Sharia
principles, methodologies and schools of thought had taken shape and put
down roots among Muslim communities across the ancient world, from West
Africa to Southeast Asia. This phenomenon came to be known as “closing
the Gate of Ijtihad,” to indicate that there is no theological space for
new creative juridical thinking.
There was, of course, no “Gate of Ijtihad” to be closed, and nobody
had the authority to close the gate even if one had existed. The
metaphor, however, highlighted the contrast between the cultivation of
diversity in the first three centuries of Sharia and the stalemate and
rigidity of the study of Islamic law since then.
The “silver lining” of ISIS is that it is forcing Muslims to confront
the consequences of archaic interpretations of aggressive jihad.
Moving from Mecca to Medina
The Prophet Muhammad was born and raised in Mecca, a town in western
Arabia, where he proclaimed Islam in AD 610. In AD 622, he had to move
with a small group of his early followers to Medina, another town in
Western Arabia, in order to escape persecution and threats to his life.
This migration not only affected where the revelations were made to
the prophet – a fact that is noted in the Quran. It also marked a shift
in the content of the Quran.
ISIS' harsh and regressive interpretation of Sharia draws on the
Quran of Medina, which repeatedly instructed Muslims to support each
other and to separate themselves from non-Muslims.
For example, in verse
3:28
(and 4:144, 8:72-73, 9:23, 71 and 60:1M), Muslims are prohibited from
taking unbelievers (pagan or polytheist) as friends and supporters.
Instead, they are instructed to look to other Muslims for friendship and
support.
The whole of Chapter 9 – which is among the last revelations –
categorically sanctions and authorizes aggressive jihad against all
non-Muslims, including People of the Book or Christians and Jews (verse
9:29).
Yes, the term jihad is used in the Quran* to mean nonviolent efforts to propagate Islam (see verses
29:8,
31:15 and 47:31). But that does not change the fact that the same term
was also used to mean aggressive war to propagate Islam.
This latter interpretation was, in fact, sanctioned by the actions and explicit instructions of
the prophet himself, and by his most senior followers, who subsequently became his first four successors and the rulers or Caliphs of Medina.
Legitimate or illegitimate?
A related difficulty in this whole discussion is that according to
Sharia, jihad can only be launched by a legitimate state authority.
ISIS claims to have Islamic legitimacy, but what is the basis of that
secretive claim? Who nominated them, and why and how should the Caliph
of ISIS have authority over the global Muslim community?
Since this authority is based on an entirely open and free process of
individual choice, ISIS’ claim may succeed to the extent it is
supported by a critical mass of Muslims.
The danger is that passive acquiescence can be used by ISIS leaders as evidence of positive support.
After all,
only a handful of Muslim majority states – and then only under Western leadership – have shown willingness to resist the military expansion of ISIS.
Meanwhile, the masses of Muslims and their community leaders are not –
tellingly – turning to Sharia to justify their opposition to ISIS
claims. Many Muslims have condemned ISIS for moral or political reasons,
but this, likely, is discredited among ISIS supporters as “Western”
reasoning.
An alternative view
What then is needed is an alternative view of Sharia, one that argues
that the scriptural sources that ISIS relies on must be seen in their
wider historical context.
These principles, in other words, may have been relevant and
applicable 1,400 years ago, when war – wherever it was being waged in
the world – was much more harsh than it is now. Exclusive Muslim
solidarity (
wala’) then was essential for the survival of the community and success of their mission.
But today, the opposite is true.
Modern international law as stated in
Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations of 1945
(a universally binding treaty) affirms equal sovereignty of all states
regardless of religious belief, and prohibits the acquisition of
territory through aggressive war.
While these principles have been violated by the major powers –
recent examples include the US/UK invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the
Russian invasion of the Ukraine in 2014 – it is impossible for any
state, including those with a Muslim majority, to accept being forced
into a self-proclaimed Islamic state, as ISIS claims to have an Islamic
mandate to do.
But for an alternative view of Sharia to emerge and take root through
modern consensus, Muslims must first acknowledge and confront the
problem of having acquiesced to a traditional interpretation of Sharia
and ignored alternatives that would condemn ISIS as un-Islamic.
One place to start is with the writing of the Sudanese religious thinker
Ustadh Mahmoud Mohamed Taha,
who proposed repudiating the specific principles of Sharia authorizing
aggressive jihad, slavery and subordination of women and non-Muslims by
relying on the earlier revelations from Mecca.
For example, verse
16:125
says: “Propagate the path of your Lord in wisdom and peaceable advice,
and argue with them in a kind manner” (see also verses 17:70, 49:13 and
88:21-22).
As Taha explained in his book
The Second Message of Islam,
the Sharia principles based on the Medina revelations came about in
response to the historical conditions of seventh-century Arabia.
Taha argued that today it is the earlier message of Islam based on
the Mecca revelations that is applicable because humanity is ready to
live up to those standards.
Despite – or perhaps because of – the desperate need for alternatives
to traditional Sharia interpretations, Taha was executed for apostasy
in Sudan in 1985, and his books in Arabic continue to be banned in most
Arab countries.
And ISIS continues to recruit.
The self-proclaimed Islamic State can survive only by fighting a
permanent war. It is my contention that it will either implode or
collapse in a total civil war because it has no viable political system
for peaceful administration or transfer of power.
But whenever it collapses and for whatever cause, the world can only
expect a new ISIS to emerge every time one disappears until we Muslims
are able to discuss openly the deadlock in reforming Sharia.
*
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, a Muslim originally from Sudan, teaches at the Emory University School of Law, Atlanta, and is an expert in human rights, Islamic law and international law.
*After the Qur'an*, the hadith (reports on the sayings and acts of the prophet) is the second most important source of Islamic law (Shari'a).
In hadith collections, jihad means armed action; for example, the 199 references to jihad in the most standard collection of hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari, all assume that jihad means warfare.7 More broadly, Bernard Lewis finds that "the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists, and traditionalists [i.e., specialists in the hadith] . . . understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense."8
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