By Sultan Shahin, Founding Editor, New Age Islam
26 September 2017
UNHRC, Item 9, General Debate, September 26, 2017,
Oral Statement by Sultan Shahin
On behalf of: Asian-Eurasian Human Rights Forum
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Mr. President,
Sixteen years after 9/11, the issue of Jihadi terrorism has become even more complex and widespread.
First, though Jihadism is a violent
offshoot of Wahhabism and Salafism, the international community has
allowed the fountainhead of Wahhabi/Salafi ideology to continue to spend
tens of billions of dollars to Wahhabise the world Muslim community.
Second, we recently saw with horror, but
without any protest from the international community, the sight of a
UN-designated terrorist, with a ten-million-dollar bounty on his head,
launch a political party and nominate another US-designated terrorist to
contest democratic elections in Pakistan. Apparently, some countries
can ignore UN directives with impunity.
Third, the Muslim community has failed
to grasp that Jihadism spread so rapidly around the world because at its
core it is not very different from the theology of consensus that
informs the religious beliefs and practices of all Muslim sects. That is
why Jihadis are not impressed when we Muslims either proclaim that
Islam is a religion of peace and pluralism or when we try to wash our
hands off Jihadism by claiming that it has nothing to do with Islam. If
we Muslims want to live as honourable citizens in the 21st century’s
globalised world, we must rethink our consensus theology in all its
dimensions and make revolutionary changes to bring it in line with the
needs of present times.
Let me elaborate a little on the
similarities in the core theologies of Jihadism and mainstream Islam as
well as suggest the contours of an alternative theology of peace and
pluralism, inclusion and acceptance of diversity, respect for human
rights and gender justice. What are the fundamental elements of
theologies of all sects including Jihadism that are the same and what
can be done about them. Let us discuss a few here briefly.
1. Infallibility,
universality and uncreatedness of Quran, regardless of the context in
which some of God's instructions came in Quran to guide the Prophet and
his followers on matters that needed to be urgently taken care of then,
but are no longer relevant in the vastly different circumstances today.
This belief is common to all sects
and sub-sects of Islam today. There is a consensus around it. So Jihadis
are not inventing a new theology if they say that those Muslims who do
not follow the war-time verses of Quran literally by fighting the kuffar
constantly or staying away from all non-Muslims in day-to-day matters
are hypocritical, and that a good, honest Muslim is one who is
perpetually engaged in offensive Jihad against non-Muslims. After all,
this is what is taught in all religious schools or madrasas, regardless
of the sect. We are told in our theological books that the only
relationship between a Muslim and a non-Muslim is that of war, and that
it is the religious duty of all Muslims to bring Islam to power in all
corners of the world, either by persuasion or force.
A new theology would seek to break
this consensus and try to convince Muslims that war-time verses of the
Prophet’s time maybe important as a historical account of the near
insurmountable difficulties the Prophet had to face to establish Islam
but do not apply to us today in the 21st century. We cannot possibly be
fighting similar wars. Muslims were fighting existential battles in the
early seventh century. Islam was in its infancy and infants do need to
be taken special care of. Now the seed that Prophet Mohammad (pbuh)
planted in the inhospitable terrain of the Arabian desert has grown into
a giant tree with branches across the world. There is no need for us to
be fighting offensive Jihad “at least once a year” as Imam Ghazali
advised in late 11th and early 12th century CE.
2. There is a consensus
among ulema (religious scholars) of all sects that Hadith narrations
(the alleged sayings of the Prophet) are akin to revelation, even though
these were collected up to 300 years after the demise of the Prophet
and contradict many of the core teachings of the Quran, the exhortations
of God whose messenger the Prophet was. This theology of consensus
implies that the Prophet spent the better part of his prophetic career
preaching against the messages revealed to him in the holy Quran.
What has actually happened is that
in the 48th year of the demise of the Prophet, his entire family was
massacred and reins of power taken over by scions of the inveterate
enemies of Islam who had fought battles against the Prophet and joined
Islam only after his victory at Mecca, in a clear bid to subvert Islam
from within when they failed to destroy it from outside. But they had to
rule Muslims for whom Quran was the only holy scripture, which they
understood, as well as had mostly memorized and written down. To
undermine Quran, and create a distance between Muslims and the Quran,
they evolved over the coming decades and centuries two institutions that
remain very powerful until today. One was Hadith, that was called akin
to revelation, and the other was that of Ulema or clerics who were
proclaimed to be of the status of heirs to the Prophet, much better able
to explain religion to Muslims than they themselves could.
The new theology will have to bring
the focus back to Quran, and seek to dislodge both Hadith and Ulema
from their present position of pre-eminence. These institutions evolved
in the era of dynastic, despotic rulers, called Khalifas. It was natural
for them to look for scriptural justifications for their exploitative,
tyrannical, imperialist, expansionist, and supremacist policies. Not
able to find justification for their policies in the Quran, which
essentially guided Muslims on a spiritual path to salvation, they
naturally created another scripture and put that on the same pedestal as
Quran. The ulema were also deployed to subvert the meaning of Quran’s
verses of war and make contextual verses into universally applicable
instructions for permanent war.
3. Sharia Laws were first
codified 120 years after the demise of the Prophet and have been
changing since from time to time and place to place. It is only
marginally based on Quran, most of it has been borrowed from pre-Islamic
Arab practices. But the theology of consensus insists on calling it
divine.
The new theology will go strictly
by the spirit of Quran and allow Muslims to formulate their laws
according to the needs of their time and place. Laws are and should
remain dynamic and just.
4. The theology of
consensus propounds a Doctrine of Abrogation, whereby earlier Meccan
verses preaching peace and pluralism, patience and perseverance,
religious freedom for all, etc., have been abrogated by later Medinan
verses of war, asking Muslims to fight, and talking about virtues and
rewards of contributing to war efforts in the way of God. It is said
that the so-called sword verse (9: 5) alone has abrogated 114 verses of
peace and pluralism revealed in early Islam at Mecca.
The new theology of peace should
emphasise that the Meccan verses are the foundational and constitutive
verses of Islam. They cannot be abrogated by any later verses of war.
The Doctrine of Abrogation will need to be rejected in toto. It is the
latter Medinan verses of war that have lost their relevance not the
original Islam preaching peace and pluralism as revealed at Mecca.
5. The concept of
Caliphate has no basis in Quran, but our theology considers it almost
mandatory. This consensus view needs to be corrected in the new
theology.
6. The theology of
consensus is of the view that Muslims should migrate from Land of
Conflict (Darul Harb) which is dominated by non-Muslims to Darul Islam
(land of Islam). This has no basis in Quran. This is not even practical
in contemporary world, though ulema keep using these terms. Even
individuals have great difficulty getting visas to visit any country,
these days, what to speak of millions of Muslims settling down in, say,
Saudi Arabia, the pre-eminent Darul Islam. Saudis did not take even one
Syrian refugee despite their horrible situation, though Germany
(so-called Darul Harb) took a million Muslim refugees out of compassion
for the suffering humanity. The new theology will have to reject such
medieval ideas as completely irrelevant and un-Quranic.
Clearly Muslims have much hard work
to do. We will need to bring about revolutionary changes in our
theology to make it compatible with the holy Quran as well as the needs
of modern times.
7:26 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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