The path to the revival of Islam
The path to the revival of Islam
By: Mohamed Hammar | Posted: Sep 13th, 2009
I am not a cleric. Neither am I an imam or a teacher of religion. I am a teacher of English who wants to put his hand to the plough, never directly in religion _it is none of my academic training_ but in religiosity; in the way my coreligionists and myself happen to apply Islam; in the way we are experiencing life through our faith and the teachings of Allah and sunna, that is.
Having by myself learnt that Islam is transparent and straightforward, and from eminent scholars (1) that our religion is simple, and that it is, however, because Muslims are NOT simple (2) that one needs to devise rational ways to be able to make it to a firm footing in terms of religious existence, I wanted to contribute an idea to all the work that those who, being Muslims or not, are doing their utmost to accomplish in a bid to understand Islam or / and to make it understood , because they all share the following: the more Islam gets decorticated, through the behavior of its advocates and believers, the better the quality of intra-social and / or international relationships will get .
In effect, if there were any ailment a Muslim is suffering, with regard to Islam today, it would be his / her own inability to adapt. Deciding on whether Muslims cannot adjust to one of the inseparable duo, Islam and life, or to both of them not being the purpose of this paper, the overall pathology of the Muslim today is unquestionably a matter of inadaptability.
This fact should by no means put at stake the religious part that sheikhs have been so far playing in always attempting to boost religious practice and religiosity. This should not discredit their work in so far as their teaching of Islam is concerned. But it does lead up to the following conclusion: the sheikhs’ work and any other traditional cleric’s “output” is no more sufficient for a Muslim to juggle religion and contemporary existence and the ensuing lifestyle .
As yet, we thankfully realize that , on the other hand, Islam is, contrarily to what some subversive school (of secularist/anti-religious thought) is trying to put forward, as healthy as the sheikhs’ job. We can also affirm that the latter is healthy, although many a critic tend to assert the converse , when seen from within the frameset of its initial prerogatives, in the way the latter have always been intrinsically defined by the Koran and sunna.
However, scrutinized from a different perspective, this job would probably be
considered to be in dire need of pedagogic reinforcement! What I mean is, if
Islam is safe and sound, and if its teachers are competent, where is the flaw
then? And if Muslims, the third party, have proved guilty (3), why hasn’t
traditional “ dawah and tabligh” _the job of sheikhs_ attained its goal by
preventing the former going astray?
The answer is that , without doubt, the
Muslims’ trouble has surpassed the very boundaries of the cleric’s job and
prerogatives, thus being entitled to be classified under a novel umbrella; that
of underground spheres; those of pedagogic enforcement, indeed. Therefore, it is
NOT the cleric alone who would be entitled to get Muslims out of trouble.
One should ask “Why could he not?” at this stage. And the answer is
as simple as Islam is in its essence, but it is also as intricate as Muslims
themselves are for the time being. Because the ills of the latter have become a
sort of immanence, so hidden betwixt the paths and sidelines of the conscience,
and so melted amongst sub-ills and modern-life pathologies that a cleric needs
to be a wealth of experts at a time, thus most likely losing control of what he
was initially meant to convey, that is God’s and Muhammad’s (pbuh) precepts.
Given that the apparent, super structural pandemic lies in the fact that politicians and politics do not seem to be providing Muslim citizens with the help and assistance, and with the counseling and comfort they deserve and need, we hold the colossal pedestal on which the none less huge double-edged statue of secularist/Islamic fanaticism stands, responsible for screening off the ever-beautiful, all-shining, versatile glamour of essential Islam, farther and further from anyone who would like to believe that Islam is far better than what indigenous politics shows and far less unruly than what exogenous propaganda does.
Our societies, in effect, have been undergoing an age-long ordeal caused by so hermetic an apparatus of incommunication hampering them from genuine kick-off in terms of progress. It was this flawed universal system of thought ( because it is a blend of inner and outer guilt) which, on a certain 9/11, had reduced to ashes thousands of innocent people, and which, in the wake of 2009,had orphaned scores of children and crushed to death thousands of infants in Gaza, thus deeply scratching not only the conscience of the down-trodden of the Arab- Muslim world( including the oppressed in Darfur or in Chechnya and a lot more elsewhere) , but also all planet -tenants .
Who is to blame philosophically other than the inability of Arabic - Islamic
thought to come up with an effective, down-to-earth methodology based on the
very philosophy it really needs. This is why I have no doubt that a new
discourse is bound to_ let’s willingly refrain from saying take over_ complement
the religious one.
Clerics have always been appointed to work on the”
pedestal “.And I would rather this pedestal collapsed by itself, when provoked
as it should be, by radical pedagogy (4). An implosion from within the dogmatic
twin-tower is the effect that could prevent any 9/11-like explosions within
universal conscience in future. But clerics have so far been ineligible for
this, for the simple reason that it is a startlingly brand-new task.
Therefore, another creed , which I would call “infraclerics” or “Third
Ijtihad” interpreters, on grounds that they would be digging underneath the
pedestal, could stem from underneath Arab-Muslim paradoxical culture, to carry
out the provocative trigger, thus complementing and by no means discrediting the
otherwise invaluable work of usual imams, muftis, exegetes, sheikhs and other
clerics. The latter, remaining the traditionally accepted mind-setters for
religion, Infraclerics would be much of “resetters “ of the invalidated ,
religion-conscious Muslim Patient (5).
They who are able to set contact between a means of communication (a foreign language) and a language -learner could well have the makings of such Infracleric. By merely substituting religion for language, and the believer for the leaner, they would most likely succeed in “resetting” the natural linkage, which is the diseased area, indeed. Not necessarily endowed with religious scholarship, the new interpreter would not have encroached upon religious territory when tackling a specific pathology of the Infrajtihad or “The Third Ijtihad” or “Integrationist Ijtihad” type(6) , because the nature of such pathology is, by default, an infra-religious one in that it usually presents the incautious examiner with religious-free symptoms. He would then solely be an interpreter of the existent interpretation (7); a sheikh of religiosity; an expert in religious pedagogy; a pre-political Essential Muslim (8).
Would Islamic Tradition for once get less theoretical and a little bit
empirical? Be it the one in form of an anti-change shield hermetically installed
in the minds of Muslims, or be it the one that has long been gulped down by that
shield-inhibited mind _ the entire set of structures of “conventional Islam”_ ,
would it look askance at an endeavor whose principles and modalities have been
laid down for the sake of reviving Islam? Would it not get to convince itself
that, because it is not to be undertaken from within , which they will rebuke,
but that its target revolves round Islam, just on its outskirts, under which
lies, as a labyrinth or a jigsaw puzzle, an entire edifice of thorough
misunderstanding? In other words, and to borrow Omid Safi ‘s also-borrowed pun,
would Tradition have a “vote “ for or a “veto” on ” this matter?!
Mohamed
Hammar
(1) Such as the late Malik Benabi of Algeria, Dr Mohamed Talbi of Tunisia, Dr Abdolkarim Soroush of Iran, Dr Hassan Hanafi of Egypt and Dr Omid Safi Of the USA.
(2) The idea of Islam being simple ad people being not so simple is one of the wittiest lessons I have learnt from my good pal Omid Safi.
(3)Our study in French “ The Muslim patient and the self-medication therapy “ uncovers such ills as they turn up through town people ‘s daily behavior in Tunisia, by means of a phenomenological approach. A brief summary of it is available on our blog.
Recently we have contrived the title (in Arabic)of “The Third (Integrationist) Ijtihad : TheMuslim Patient’s Trip from Islam to Islam”, which was published on www.arabicebook.com
(4) Our acknowledgements to who I consider the Godfather of language teachers, the ever-great Noam Chomsky.
(5) Note No 3
(6) Actually, this is the name we have given to the method in question. For insight into the idea, together with its other components and concepts, visit our blog ( cf note No 3)
(7) This point, I hope, will appease certain too cautious minds as to whether we should or should not re-interpret Islam. What’s more, it indicates the latter could be, in all, a false problem. Would our eminent religious scholars seeking reinterpretation have happened to be asking for trouble..(?!)
(8) As a matter of fact, one of the components of Infrajtihad is E.M.A; Essential Muslim Activity ( in French “A.M.E” or “Âme” meaning “soul”). It is by no means a political movement whatsoever, but a trend of thought and resistance to incommunication.This has later developed into the concept of “Integrated Muslim”( supposedly and theoretically, the outcome of “Integrationist Ijtihad”, “The Third Ijtihad” , that is).
About the Author:
Born in Tunis,
Tunisia.High school Teacher of English.Like writing, reading, soccer,
cinema.Wrire in Arabic, in French and in English. Putting forward a
\\\"scheme\\\" or \\\"strategy\\\" or \\\"method\\\" for renovating Islamic
religious discourse; a \\\"method\\\" that is supposed to rest upon an Islam
& Language merger called \\\"Applied Religiosity. The whole \\\"effort\\\"
is called \\\"The Third Ijtihad\\\" or \\\"Integrationist Ijtihad. And the
cultural outcome that is supposed to stem from the science-driven \\\"method\\\"
is to be called \\\"Median Culture\\\" or \\\"al-wassita\\\" in Araic. In
all,the undertaking aims at shaping the \\\"Integrated Muslim\\\".
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Why Muslims resort to violence and not to left-wing politics to express Islam
Why Muslims resort to violence
and not to left-wing politics
to express Islam
It is a matter of custom that the
concept of “right” among Muslims is associated with good, and that of
“left” with evil. The danger is that this is not confined to a purely
religious register (as the concept is of religious extraction), but it
has somehow spread into the political register.
In modern-era politics, however, left-wing has always
meant good; it is activism opposed to oppression and repression, to
mercantilism and winged liberalism, to terror and despotism, and so on.
Likewise, right-wing still indicates you are more of a tradition-driven
citizen, avid for power, greedy for money, turning your back on
people’s misery and seldom putting your back into the attempts made by
the downtrodden to better their living conditions.
Which haphazard or topsy-turvy mechanism has so far
misled Muslims on their way to emancipation from poverty and
alienation? Which erroneous thread can one clutch at in a bid to
comprehend what can have led up to bloody events like 9/11 or like
countless other bombings against innocent creatures and disarmed
civilians even if this always took place somewhere there “smelled” of
hegemony and world-centered despotism. There is no excuse for terror.
And terror is not akin to Islam.
It goes without saying that there is never smoke
without fire, but we Muslims should refrain from finding excuse for
misbehavior. Resolving such a burning issue as the Occident-Orient
“clash” or the North-South conflict or whichever other name one may
apply to it, should start from the very basics of a Muslim’s political
culture. In other words, have we got a smattering of the very culture
that had launched western societies into the highest spheres of
human-centered pluralistic arena of political coexistence? If the
answer is ‘yes’, why should our intellectual elite not thought of
initiating the masses to an adequate form of peaceful left-wing
activism?
There is, in fact, an answer within the answer, to
this question. To be short, let us acknowledge that, on the one hand
leftist political movements in Arab-Islamic societies have never been
able to comply with the aspirations of their corresponding peoples. And
the reason is crystal clear: leftist activism is Islam-free on grounds
that Islam is, by default, a rightist religion, so to speak. This is a
fallacy.
One should also admit that, on the other hand Muslims
have never had, in any thought-tank whatsoever, any re-shuffle of
religious-born concepts in light of the requirements of modern-era
political science, which may – to a certain extent - remove the blame
from our left-wing militants, but will by no means leave the
intellectual and educational elite leisurely savoring the lush of their
shortsightedly built five-star holiday suite. For it is they who have
to lend their ears , on one side, to contemporary culture as driven
towards us by Western thought, and on another side, to intrinsic,
religiously learnt concepts. They are required to make the best of the
two cultures, not by means of mend-and-repair techniques, but through
an integratively devised scheme.
The very first step of such an undertaking will be to
make it clear that “right” and “left” in Islam merely mean the converse
in Politics. Thus, how can you expect a Muslim, who must hold the Koran
with his “right” hand, to gulp down the idea of the “left” being the
more religiously oriented wing in political struggle? Likewise, do we
not have to make use of the “right” hand to perform the nobler tasks
such as eating or writing (I am sorry for left-handers!) or drawing
money. In the such mindset, how can a Muslim envision the ”left” as
some power that can boost their struggle against people who sponge the
money and wealth of the needy, or against obscurantist forces that
sustain illiteracy, or against the various trends that regard bribery,
swindling and deceit as part and parcel of life success, when it is
etched in their minds that the people of the right (“Ahl al-Maymana”)
as opposed to the people of the left (Ahl al-Maysara”) are the very
believers that deserve a place in Heaven?
All things considered, many more implications of such
lethally confusing inversion are still to be demonstrated, but so far
we wonder if the right-and-left game has not given Muslims so strong a
headache that it is high time they reflected upon their condition and
went off the beaten track of flawed tradition in a bid to embark on
some raft-like ark
for “leftist believers”?!
m.h
Applied Religiosity..
*Arabislamia’s
life strife: can Applied Religiosity come to life?
I am not
a cleric. Neither am I an imam or a teacher of religion. I am a teacher of
English who wants to put his hand to the plough, never directly in religion _it
is none of my academic training_ but in religiosity; in the way my
coreligionists and myself happen to apply Islam; in the way we are experiencing
life through our faith and the teachings of Allah and sunna, that is.
Having by
myself learnt that Islam is transparent and straightforward, and from eminent
scholars (1) that our religion is simple, and that it is,however,
because Muslims are NOT simple (2) that one needs to devise rational
ways to be able to make it to a firm footing in terms of religious existence, I
wanted to contribute an idea to what all those who, being Muslims or not, are doing
their utmost to achieve in a bid to understand Islam or / and to make it understood , because they
all share the following: the more Islam gets decorticated, through the behavior
of its advocates and believers, the better the quality of intra-social and / or international
relationships will get .
In effect,
if there were any ailment a Muslim is suffering, with regard to Islam today, it
would be his / her own inability to adapt. Deciding on whether Muslims cannot
adjust to one of the inseparable duo, Islam and life, or to both of them not
being the purpose of this paper, the overall pathology of the Muslim today is unquestionably
a matter of inadaptability.
This fact
should by no means put at stake the religious part that sheikhs have been so
far playing in always attempting to boost religious practice and religiosity.
This should not discredit their work in so far as their teaching of Islam is
concerned. But it does lead up to the following conclusion: the sheikhs’
work and any other traditional cleric’s “output” is no more sufficient for a Muslim to juggle religion and contemporary existence and the ensuing lifestyle .
As yet, we
thankfully realize that , on the other hand, Islam is, contrarily to what some
subversive school (of secularist/anti-religious thought) is trying to put
forward, as healthy as the sheikhs’ job. We can also affirm that the latter is healthy,
although many a critic tend to assert the converse , when seen from within the
frameset of its initial prerogatives, in the way the latter have always been defined
by the Koran and sunna.
Otherwise, scrutinized from a different
perspective, this job would probably be considered to be in dire need of
pedagogic reinforcement! What I mean is, if Islam is safe and sound, and if its
teachers are competent, where is the flaw then? And if Muslims, the third
party, have proved guilty (3), why hasn’t traditional “tabligh” _the job
of sheikhs_ attained its goal by preventing the former going astray?
The answer
is that , without doubt, the Muslims’ trouble has surpassed the very boundaries
of the cleric’s job and prerogatives, thus being entitled to be classified
under a novel umbrella; that of underground spheres; those of pedagogic
enforcement, indeed. Therefore, it is NOT the cleric alone who would be
entitled to get Muslims out of trouble.
One should
ask “Why could he not?” at this stage. And the answer is as simple as Islam is
in its essence, but it is also as intricate as Muslims themselves are for the
time being. Because the ills of the latter have become a sort of immanence, so
hidden betwixt the paths and sidelines of the conscience, and so melted amongst
sub-ills and modern-life pathologies that a cleric needs to be a wealth of
experts at a time, thus most likely losing control of what he was initially
meant to convey, that is God’s and Muhammad’s (pbuh) precepts.
Given that the apparent, super structural
pandemic lies in the fact that politicians and politicians do not seem to be providing
Muslim citizens with the help and assistance, and with the counseling and
comfort they deserve and need, we hold the colossal pedestal on which the none
less huge double-edged statue of secularist/Islamic fanaticism stands,
responsible for screening off the ever-beautiful, all-shining, versatile
glamour of essential Islam, farther and further from anyone who would like to
believe that Islam is far better than what indigenous politics shows and far less unruly than what exogenous propaganda does.
Our societies,
in effect, have been undergoing an age-long ordeal caused by so hermetic an
apparatus of incommunication hampering them from genuine kick-off in terms of
progress. It was this flawed universal system of thought ( because it is a
blend of inner and outer guilt) which, on a certain 9/11, had reduced to ashes
thousands of innocent people, and which, in the wake of 2009,had orphaned
scores of children and crushed to death
thousands of infants in Gaza, thus deeply scratching not only the conscience of
the down-trodden of Arabislamia ( including
the oppressed in Darfur or in Chechnya and a lot more elsewhere) , but also all planet -tenants .
Who is to
blame philosophically other than the inability of Arabislamia’s thought to come
up with an effective, down-to-earth methodology based on the very philosophy it
really needs. This is why I have no doubt that a new discourse is bound to_
let’s willingly refrain from saying take over_ complement the religious one.
Clerics
have always been appointed to work on the pedestal which I would rather
collapsed by itself, when provoked as it should be, by radical pedagogy (4).
An implosion from within the dogmatic twin-tower is the effect that could
prevent any 9/11-like explosions within universal conscience in future. But clerics
have so far been ineligible for this, for the simple reason that it is a startlingly
brand-new task.
Therefore, another
creed , which I would call “infraclerics”, on grounds that they would be
digging underneath the pedestal, could stem from underneath Arabislamia’s
paradoxical culture, to carry out the
provocative trigger, thus complementing and by no means discrediting the otherwise
invaluable work of usual imams, muftis, exegetes and other sheikhs. The latter,
remaining the traditionally accepted mind-setters for religion, Infraclerics would be much of “resetters “ of
the invalidated , religion-conscious Muslim Patient (5).
They who
are able to set contact between a means of communication (a foreign language)
and a language -learner could well have the makings of such Infracleric. By
merely substituting religion for language, and the believer for the leaner, they
would most likely succeed in “resetting” the natural linkage, which is the
diseased area, indeed. Not necessarily endowed with religious scholarship, the
new interpreter would not have encroached upon religious territory when
tackling a specific Infrajtihad (6) pathology, because the nature of
such pathology is, by default, an infra-religious one in that it usually
presents the incautious examiner with religious-free symptoms. He would then solely
be an interpreter of the existent interpretation (7); a sheikh of
religiosity; an expert in religious pedagogy; a pre-political Essential Muslim
(8).
Would
Islamic Tradition for once get less theoretical and a little bit empirical? Be
it the one in form of an anti-change shield hermetically installed in the minds
of Muslims, or be it the one that has long been gulped down by that shield-inhibited
mind _ the entire set of structures of “conventional Islam”_ , would it look
askance at an endeavor whose principles and modalities have been laid down for
the sake of reviving Islam? Would it not get to convince itself that, because
it is not to be undertaken from within ,
which they will rebuke, but that its target revolves round Islam, just on its
outskirts, under which lies, as a labyrinth or a jigsaw puzzle, an entire
edifice of thorough misunderstanding? In other words, and to borrow Omid Safi
‘s also-borrowed pun, would Tradition have a “vote “ for or a “veto” on ” this matter?!
Mohamed
Hammar
February 6th
2009
*It is our
neologism for the “Arabo-islamic people” and/or their culture and /or their dream etc.; a utopia in noble sense.
(1) Such
as the late Malik Benabi of Algeria, Dr Mohamed
Talbi of Tunisia, Dr Abdolkarim Soroush of Iran, Dr Hassan Hanafi of Egypt and
Dr Omid Safi Of the USA.
(2) The
idea of Islam being simple ad people being not so simple is one of the wittiest
lessons I have learnt from my good pal Omid Safi.
(3)Our
study in French “ The Muslim patient and the self-medication therapy “ uncovers
such ills as they turn up through town people ‘s daily behavior in Tunisia, by
means of a phenomenological approach. A brief summary of it is available on our
blog http://islaminfrajtihad.canalblog.com.
(4) Our
acknowledgements to who I consider the Godfather of language teachers, the
ever-great Noam Chomsky.
(5) Note No
3
(6)
Actually, this is the name we have given to the method in question.For insight
into the idea, together with its other components and concepts, visit our blog
( cf note No 3)
(7) This point,
I hope, will appease certain too cautious minds as to whether we should or
should not re-interpret Islam. What’s more, it indicates the latter could be,
in all, a false problem. Would our eminent religious scholars seeking reinterpretation
have happened to be asking for trouble..(?!)
(8) As a
matter of fact, one of the components of Infrajtihad is E.M.A; Essential Muslim
Activity ( in French “A.M.E” or “Âme”
meaning “soul”). It is by no means a
political movement whatsoever, but a trend of thought and resistance to incommunication…