Sharia is a Muslim’s Grammar, Sharia is a Muslim’s Grammar, but who on earth can be all-grammatical?

             

Sharia is a Muslim’s Grammar, but who on earth can be all-grammatical?

                                 

  If only Noam Chomsky were Muslim and could                                                   get into my “capsule”!

                                                                                                                                                                                         

Dear Muslims,

Wishing you a blessed Ramadan, I remind you that Islam is Islam wherever you happen to be living . That’s why although I do hold that each people of our ummah has specific needs with regard  to the issue of adaptability, countless large-scale problems  have always been shared by Muslim believers all over the world. Then any resolution to these will benefit Muslims , in terms of adaptability both on the part of the individual and on the part of the entire society; adaptability to their Faith within their social environment and cultural background.

The so-called problems are, as I see it, most of them, featured through the burning issue of what a U.S Muslim militant called the “two cancers”; radical Islam & secular integrism. Seen from another perspective, this ailment has been diagnosed by many an observer as “schizophrenia” (a non-Muslim writer from Syria, Grégoire Mercho wrote a book specifically on this). And I do hold with him. I even hold that the Muslim is the most schizophrenic living entity that has ever existed.

For this, I’ve worked for a couple of decades now, on some scheme, or some strategy that a Muslim could try to comply with in order that they can fine-tune their fidgety position with regard to Islam as a whole.
What is, in a word, I said to myself, a Muslim’s major source of inner unrest? Then I felt that the flaw is neither with Islam itself (as some far-fetching scholars believe), nor with the believer on grounds of his/her lack of Faith. Paradoxically, it lies in the hands of the believer, indeed, but on grounds that he/she lacks the right perspective from which they should regard both Islam and a Muslim’s  life and experience. It is a sort of intellectual myopia. And it’s it that needs fine-tuning.

What is the difference between a coreligionist being short of faith and another being short of right-sightedness? One might wonder. In fact, the difference is great. The former is supposed to need conventional dawah and tabligh, which is a very dicey enterprise, having proved faulty and even devastating ( the 9/11 incident was the tip of the iceberg of an incongruous therapy consisting in leading up the believer to an overdose of faith). Whereas the predicament of the Muslim being in dire need of adjusting their sight to the right matter (Islam/Text and Islam/experience and thought) is another story.

Fine-tuning a Muslim’s way of seeing themselves through the couple Text/real-life-based thought needs dawah and tabligh, but dawah and tabligh of a new type, responding to an anxious Muslim’s present-day needs. And the latter will NOT be found solely in the Koran and Sunnah; they will be excavated into modern sciences . Thus, a research-conscious  and faith-inspired schoolteacher, journalist, physicist, engineer and so on, have to find out untrodden paths, thanks to their perseverance in  believing that “ Islam is  valid for all epochs and all places”. So that the novel findings will be the right ones that will do for the novel dawah and tabligh, thus allowing followers to relish imam’s sermons devised off the beaten track.

And even if scientific and technological development has now given rise to a multitude of invaluable tools that are at the disposal of all  humans seeking progress through integrity, in a multitude of fields of activity, Muslims are unluckily NOT presented with these tools in an  integratively devised way  so the tools provoke instant impetus to change(in themselves and in society).

I, on my part, have the “capsule”, which is one of several tools belonging to some Ijtihad undertaking I will call “The Third Ijtihad”(or Integrationist Ijtihad”) aiming to help the believer contribute to constructing what I will call “Median Culture”, the very culture that will be the direct outcome of the novel ijtihad; a Muslim’s  “output” laid down thanks to prior correctness of  the once defective sightedness.
Let me, last but not least, refer you to an article on my blog (http://islaminfrajtihad.com) entitled “The Capsule Theory”. Now I will not repeat what the article forwards, but I will attempt to enlist some advantages to boarding such a device:

1. The single crew member – the Muslim Wassat ( of the middle; median; or now he happens to be also called “Mundamij”; “Integrated” or “integrated-to-be”, that is) has a destination, Divine Unity. And he has a propeller, Faith and its components. He/ she will try to brush up their Islam as a foreign language learner tries to always perform better and to produce a better quality speech which will dialectically enhance a sheikh’s discourse.

2. The single crew member is supposed to be an “active processor” of Islamic and para-Islamic (life-like) knowledge, and not a “passive receiver” of sermons, teachings, dawah and tabligh; which he is NOT today. Being imported from  the language learning sphere and borrowed from teaching methodologies, this method can help strengthen a Muslim’s adherence to religious precepts so that he/she gets to be inventive in terms of behavior, as the same principle does to a foreign language learner’s ability to adhere to linguistic exponents in order that he/she utilizes them in a creative way.

3. The capsule pilot is supposed to have got rid of a deadly confusion. His right place being from now in the cabin, he must not encroach upon the antechamber where should only lie crude, raw, bookish Islam. Being able to communicate with the latter is a Muslim’s right and duty, but this does not mean they should be brandishing it with no direct response to an urgent, real-life need. Just like a language learner, who can by no means, once and for all, and all at a time, make use of all the Grammar that exists in books and dictionaries.
Sharia is a Muslim’s Grammar, but who on earth can be all grammatical? 

Mohamed Hammar