"Applied Religiosity»:Method for eradicating Islam-related fanaticism and boosting Muslims’ability to make themselves understood
« Applied Religiosity » : Method for eradicating Islam-related fanaticism and boosting Muslims’ ability to make themselves understood
(briefing)
Who among Muslims does not know that “ Lo! Allah changeth not the condition of a folk until they (first) change that which is in their heart” (Koran; 13 : 11) ? Seldom does a believer do what is required , though.
Who among mosque regulars has never heard for the umpteenth time the imam lengthily praising Islam as the religion of reason, wisdom and work? But countless Muslims still embrace wishful thinking, and a lot more look down on manual work, let alone any other type of energy-demanding task that puts at stake the labourer’s tragic leaning towards leisure and rest.
Although being unquestionably a reaction to ill-treatment and prevarication on the part of previous and present-day colonial powers, and also to losing home policies, Islam-related violence is in large part due to a flawed religious education system. Particularly religious discourse is to blame. Until something has been done to improve it, we can distinguish three major categories of discourse: imam’s congregational Friday sermon; lectures given by a cleric away from prayer hours, and dawah and tabligh sessions.
*What doesn’t work?
- It is as if we were in the wake of Islam: the method of preaching is based on “mimicry & repetition" and on the behaviourist school.
-In the mosque, what prevails is what we call in the language teaching field, the “chalk and talk” method.
* What does Islam recommend?
- The Koran recommends methodologies that have been ignored in religious education but are still in use in language teaching. Why not make use of them in sermons, lectures and dawah & tabligh? (to be continued)
m.h
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…