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THE WORLD OF FATWAS
or the Shariah in Action
by Arun Shourie.
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Arun Shourie gives a good introduction to the topic before delving into individual chapters, beginning with recent history in India and giving history - and more - of fatwas. But - and he's warned readers about it - revolting matters already come at beginning of the second chapter, making one wonder if one should read the rest at all. Presumably not every chapter would be such a put off, but still.
Wish there were "skip" buttons!
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Their Sway
1. Their ways, their power
2. All of life Believers and Kafirs
3. Identity: from distinctiveness to assertiveness to aggressiveness
4. ‘Worse than All Creation’
5. Khilafat, independence and after Women and Shariah
6. ‘Mom ki naak, balki raal ki pudiya, balki baarood ki dibiya’ Shariah and Power
7. Shariah as power Their World
8. Yet it moves not!
9. A closed, self-perpetuating circle Quran and Hadis
10. A fundamental difficulty Our World
11. To give history a helping hand
12. ‘But who reads the fatwas?’
Epilogue
Epilogue or reasons for hope, but work to be done
Basic Texts and Index
Basic texts which have been referred to frequently
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Introduction
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"First, our scholars have not spared time for this vital material for the same reason on account of which they have not spared time for other things vital to our existence as a country. Most of the intellectual work in India consists in writing footnotes to work being done in the West—this has been so in the case of Marxist intellectuals even more than it is in the case of the others. And when our intellectuals are not engaged in writing these footnotes, they are busy following the fashion of the day in Western circles, busy ‘applying’, as the phrase goes, to Indian material the notion or ‘thesis’ which has become fashionable in the West. In a word, our scholarly work is derivative. So the first reason there has been no substantial study of the fatwas in India is that they have not yet caught the eye of the West.
"The second reason is that analysing the fatwas would expose that which neither the secularist nor the liberal Muslim wants exposed. The liberal Muslim has internalized the notion that to bring the truth about the shariah to light, to put in the open facts about those who are the public face of the community, is to ‘help the enemies of Islam’. The secularist is even more reluctant to have these facts put to public view. He has established his credentials of secularism by espousing the very positions which the ulema and fundamentalist Muslim politicians have advocated. Once the facts about the ulema, about the law they lay down, about the norms they prescribe become common knowledge the secularist would be out of the very thing he has made the proof of his secularism.
"The third reason is just plain funk. Bringing the truth about the ulema and their fatwas out into the open is certain to call upon one the wrath of the ulema. The secularist naturally does not want that to happen: quite the contrary, he is ever anxious to be in the good books of the ulema—their certificates are invaluable in establishing his credentials; being invited to their gatherings is what gives him an edge over other secularists. And the liberal Muslim doesn’t want to tangle with the ulema for the very reason that they have the power to issue fatwas."
" ... Maulana Ahmad Riza Khan. He was a prolific issuer of fatwas, a formidable polemicist, often an abusive one, an indefatigable campaigner, in a word a pugilist. Few dared to cross swords with him, indeed few dared to even stand in his way. He lived from 1856 to 1921, and came to exercise a mesmeric hold over vast numbers."
" ... he was most emphatic in denouncing anyone who joined hands with the kafirs even for attaining strictly Islamic objectives. Thus, for instance, he heaped abuse and scorn at those who had agreed to work under the leadership of Gandhiji even though it had been with the object of restoring the greatest of Islamic institutions, the Caliphate. You have agreed to work under a kafir, he railed. You have made Muslims the slaves of a kafir, he railed. I have used the twelve-volume set of his fatwas published in August 1994."
"The Dar al-Ulum is of course well known. Started in 1866, it is often referred to as the Al-Azhar of India. From its beginning it was profoundly anti-West, it was anti-modern. Accordingly, many persons associated with it exerted themselves to undermine the British. That opposition was an aspect of its commitment to orthodoxy. Lauding this commitment to orthodoxy as one of the hallmarks of the Dar al-Ulum, a Government of India publication, Centres of Islamic Learning in India, says,
"One of the main objects of the Darul Ulum was to provide the Indian Muslims with a direct access to the original sources of Islamic Learning, produce learned men with missionary zeal to work among the Muslim masses to create a truly religious awakening towards classical Islam, ridding the prevalent one in India of innovation and unorthodox practices, observances and beliefs that have crept into it and to impart instruction in classical religion."
"Even by itself this is a vast amount of primary material the forty volumes comprise over 18,000 pages. I could not have gone through the material but for the help of Mr Yashpal Bandhu, Mr Sita Ram Goel, and two friends who happen to be Muslim: at their request I have to withhold their names, such are the apprehensions under which even scholars like them have to live. ... "
"So as to show the continuity of the tradition I have in addition referred to the three most widely used texts on Sunni law—the Fatawa-i-Alamgiri, the compilation which was put together at the instance of Emperor Aurangzeb; the Hidayah of Sheikh Burhanu’d-din Ali (d. AD 1198); and the Fatawa-i-Qazi Khan of Imam Fakhruddin Hasan bin Mansur al-Uzjandi al-Farghani (d. AD 1196). The way in which the tradition has remained locked in a straitjacket will become apparent in the chapter on women and talaq in which I have illustrated the point by using, not primarily the volumes of fatwas listed above but the twelfth-century Fatawa-i-Qazi Khan — an unconscionable and totally indefensible practice like ‘conditional divorce’ continues unchanged and unchallenged as one of Allah’s boons to men from the twelfth-century Fatawa-i-Qazi Khan, through the volumes of fatwas that we are primarily concerned with, to the rulings of our courts in present-day India."
"Conditional divorce"??????!!!!!!!
"There is one final extension. A vital part of my argument is that, while many of the things we read in the fatwas seem strange to us, they accurately reflect what has been set out in the Quran and the Hadis. This fact that what they are enforcing is what the Quran and the Prophet prescribed is also one of the sources of the strength of the ulema: in the end they can always cite the Quran and the Hadis, and no Muslim can find an answer around those ultimate authorities. ... "
"It is possible that the reader will feel embarrassed or angered by what is said in the fatwas, as well as in the primary sources. But he must remember that that is what the texts actually say, and that both the collections of fatwas which I have used and of course the Quran and the collections of Hadis are available in bookshops throughout our country. Indeed, they are the high literature of the community. They constitute the texts which students learn and memorize at the ‘centers of Islamic learning’ that we are forever being told are among the prides of India. ... "
"When the material is freely available, when it is in the widest possible circulation in the very language in which the more impressionable masses have ready access to it, when this is what they are being constantly urged to read and indeed to live by, when this is the material which is taught and internalized in the ‘centers of Islamic learning’, when it forms the staple of those who control the mind and reactions of the community, when in fact it constitutes the very device through which they control and direct the community, when it is the high literature of the community, when it is the material on which the learned of the community are weaned, when it constitutes the most authoritative out-turn of those who are the most highly respected and the most influential personages in the community, when these are the norms and decrees by ‘which the community is to regulate its life, why should the material not be available in English also, why should it not be scrutinized?"
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January 09, 2022 - January 09, 2022.
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Their Sway
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1. Their ways, their power
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" ... Gandhiji had taken up the Khilafat question. By then the Khilafat was a bankrupt and discredited institution. But Gandhiji concluded that as Muslims in India felt so strongly about it, all Indians—in particular the Hindus, even more particularly he, personally— must make the issue their own. Nothing should be expected of the Muslims or Muslim leaders, he insisted, our support for the issue must be unilateral, it must be absolutely unconditional. Many felt that as a reciprocal gesture Muslim leaders should at least have Muslims give up slaughtering cows. Gandhiji was adamant: there must be no bargaining, he maintained; if as a result of our espousing the issue of Khilafat, Muslim hearts melt and they of their own decide to give up slaughtering cows, that would be a consummation, but we must not make support for Khilafat conditional upon anything. Others maintained that Muslim leaders must give up the demand the British had engineered them to make—that of separate electorates. Again Gandhiji was adamant: he saw of course the British design to divide the two communities; he saw too that this device—separate electorates—was the poisoned seed which would eventually tear them apart; but his answer to that was that everyone must take up an issue dear to the Muslims and thereby wean them from the designs of the British. Not just Lala Lajpat Rai, Swami Shraddhananda, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, but even the young Jawaharlal—the sentence occurs in the context of the Angora Deputation—felt that Mohammed Ali ‘wanted to use Hindus simply as pawns’.1 But Gandhiji was adamant: he would rather be deceived a thousand times, he maintained, than not trust."
"In 1923 Maulana Mohammed Ali was chosen the president of the Congress. ... "
He spoke.
" ... Be that as it may, it was just as peculiar to Mahatma Gandhi also; but it was reserved for a Christian Government to treat as a felon the most Christ-like man of our times (Shame, Shame) and to penalize as a disturber of the public peace the one man engaged in public affairs who comes nearest to the Prince of Peace."
"Soon enough the same Maulana Mohammed Ali who had been kissing Gandhiji’s feet, who had been falling at his feet, who had been shedding tears in such profusion, who had hailed him as ‘the most Christ-like man of our times’, declares at Aligarh and again at Ajmer:
"However pure Mr Gandhi’s character may be, he must appear to me from the point of view of religion inferior to any Mussalman though he be without character."
Ambedkar wrote about this about turn.
"When Mr Mohammed Ali was speaking at a meeting held at Aminabad Park in Lucknow he was asked whether the sentiments attributed to him were true. Mr Mohammed Ali without any hesitation or compunction replied:
‘Yes, according to my religion and creed, I do hold an adulterous and a fallen Mussalman to be better than Mr Gandhi.’8"
"As the controversy swelled, Maulana Mohammed Ali gave his version of the reason for his statement. In a letter to Swami Shraddhananda he wrote:
"The fact is as I had stated verbally to you. Even then some Mussalman friends have been constantly flinging at me the charge of being a worshipper of Hindus and a Gandhi-worshipper. The real object of these gentlemen was to alienate from me the Mussalman community, the Khilafat Committee and the Congress, by representing that I had become a follower of Mahatma Gandhi in my religious principles. I had, therefore, on several occasions plainly declared that in the matter of religion, I professed the same belief as any other true Mussalman, and as such I claimed to be a follower of the Prophet Mohammed (on him be peace) and not of Gandhiji. And further that since I hold Islam to be the highest gift of God, therefore, I was impelled by the love I bear towards Mahatmaji to pray to God that He might illumine his soul with the true light of Islam. I wish, however, to emphatically declare that I hold that today neither the representatives of Islam nor of the Hindu, Jewish, Nazarene or Parsi faith can present another instance of such high character and moral worth as Gandhiji and that is the reason why I hold him in such high reverence and affection. ... "
"But between belief and actual character there is a wide difference. As a follower of Islam I am bound to regard the creed of Islam as superior to that professed by the followers of any non-Islamic religion. And in this sense the creed of even a fallen and degraded Mussalman is entitled to a higher place than that of any other non-Muslim irrespective of his high character even though the person in question be Mahatma Gandhi himself.9"
"The Kohat matter also took an ugly turn. Muslims were the overwhelming proportion of the population. Hindus and Sikhs had been set upon and driven out. They had been thrashed, killed, forced to undergo conversions.
"But to the astonishment of all, in December 1924 at the session in Bombay of the Muslim League (of all things), the till-recently president of the Congress, Maulana Mohammed Ali, moved an embellishment to what, even to begin with, was a partisan resolution. The resolution maintained that ‘the sufferings of the Hindus of Kohat are not unprovoked, but that, on the contrary, the facts brought to light make it clear that gross provocation was offered to the religious sentiments of the Mussalmans, and the Hindus were the first to resort to violence; and further that, though their sufferings were very great, and they are deserving of the sympathy of all Mussalmans, it was not they alone that suffered...’13"
" ... Maulana Shaukat Ali accompanied Gandhiji to Rawalpindi to meet the refugees from Kohat. The two issued separate statements on what they had learnt about the riots.16 Worse emerged."
" ... Bapu then began to amend his own report. Shaukat Ali vehemently insisted that Bapu must drop the comparison with (Gen.) Dyer, the paragraph showing Bapu’s reasons for his blaming Muslims and the sentence that it was, by and large, not the Muslim community that had suffered but the Hindus. Bapu slashed all that. ... "
"When Shaukat Ali refused to sign the report which pinpointed the responsibility on Muslims of Kohat, was he being merely, and routinely partisan? Or was he obeying a higher religious command?"
"‘al-Salam Alikam, My Lord, I have received your letter just now. Allah be praised that all is well,’ wrote Iqbal to his friend, the historian Akbar Shah Najibabadi on 12 April 1925.
"You have rightly observed that the influence of professional theologians (maulwis) had declined steeply as a result of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s movement but that the Khilafat Committee has re-established their prestige among Indian Muslims due to the Committee’s need for political fatwas. This was a grave mistake which has perhaps not been realized by anyone till now.
"He continued,
"I have had an experience of this (mistake) recently. Some days ago I had written an essay in English on the subject of Ijtihad. It was read at a conference held here. Allah willing it will be published also. But some people have pronounced me a Kafir. In any case, I will talk to you about all this in detail when you come to Lahore. In India, these days in particular, we haye to move with care and due circumspection.18
"Ijtihad, as is well known, is the right to interpret the texts. It had been one of the devices by which Muslim society had tried to loosen the straitjacket. But barely 200 years after the Prophet’s death, the ulema decreed that ‘the doors of Ijtihad have been closed.’ This was being done, they said, because there were no pious Muslims left who could give reliable interpretations. Literal adherence shall be the rule henceforth, they decreed. As we know from his Lectures, which we shall take up in a moment, Iqbal believed that there was absolutely no basis for this embargo, and he held it to have been responsible for the subsequent stultification of Islamic society. But, as he wrote, he was dubbed a kafir for espousing that view. And he, with all the robustness he counselled to the world, chose to be careful and circumspect. The paper was not published."
Is Shourie missing the point? Iqbal said
" ... "You have rightly observed that the influence of professional theologians (maulwis) had declined steeply as a result of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s movement but that the Khilafat Committee has re-established their prestige among Indian Muslims due to the Committee’s need for political fatwas. ... "
In short, Gandhi brought on regression of the other community with his politics.
"Three years later the Muslim Association at Madras invited him to deliver lectures on modernizing Islamic thought. He organized the theme in six lectures which he delivered at Madras, Mysore, Hyderabad and Aligarh during 1929. He added a seventh lecture later. The collection was published by the Oxford University Press in 1934."
"He traced the ossification of Muslim society to the fact that, ever since the acutest minds gravitated to Sufism, ‘the Muslim State was... left in the hands of intellectual mediocrities, and the unthinking masses of Islam, having no personalities of a higher calibre to guide them, found their security only in blindly following the schools.’"
"‘No people can afford to reject their past entirely; for it is their past that has made their personal identity.’ In Islam, he said, the task of reforming institutions is even more delicate as it’s character is non-territorial, as ‘mutually repellent races’have adopted it. Hence, he declared in words which echo admonitions we shall soon encounter, ‘In the evolution of such a society even the immutability of socially harmless rules relating to eating and drinking, purity or impurity, has a life of its own, inasmuch as it tends to give such society a specific inwardness, and further secures that external and internal uniformity which counteracts the forces of heterogeneity always latent in a society of a composite character...’:"
"One telling clue is that the lectures were delivered in English—a language in which they were less liable to have an impact on the broad mass of Muslims or even the Muslim literati, but also the language in which they were less liable to provoke the ire of the ulema. The Urdu translation of the lectures was never published during Iqbal’s lifetime.
"The Lectures were eventually published in Urdu only in 1958—the poet having been safely dead for twenty years.
"And to this day the Ulema exclaim how much better it would have been had the Lectures never been published.20"
Next, Arun Shourie describes reaction to "The Arab Civilization", translation of Joseph Hell's original German book, translated into urfu and published by Jamia Milia.
" ... We had many expectations of this organization, Maulwi Mahmud Sher continued. What is most regrettable is that this book was published with the permission of and in consultation with a man as capable and zealous as Dr Zakir Hussain Sahib: the target was thus made specific—first some details in one book; then the translator; next the organization which had been so perfidious as to publish it; and finally the man running that institution.
"Remember that the Jamia had been the object of the ire of the fundamentalists from the very beginning. It had been set up with the specific and declared object of nurturing citizens who, being devout Muslims, would dedicate themselves to the nationalist cause. Aligarh had already fallen to the fundamentalists: Jamia had been set up to counter the Aligarh ideology; it was therefore in the line of fire. Dr Zakir Hussain in particular was known for his efforts to widen the minds of the students and to give the institution a catholic character. The zeroing-in thus was not without a purpose. ... "
"The Maulwi wrote that he had read many books on the civilization of Arabia but that this book totally lacked sympathy with Arabia—another typical refrain: the focus is not on specifics, the motives of the author are questioned. In fact the book does not deserve either attention or answer, declared the Maulwi even as he focussed attention on it! Dr Abid Husain and Dr Zakir Hussain, both of whom know German, should have written a rejoinder to it in German, declared the Maulwi who had just declared that the book did not deserve an answer! ... "
"Under the circumstances to spread the notion that the management of Jamia or the translator do not care for the prestige of the Prophet is very regrettable, Niyazi complained. Maulana Mohammed Ali has assured me that I should trust in your honesty, and I hope, said Niyazi, that you will not form a wrong opinion about my iman, faith, and aqayad, beliefs. He ended with the plea that the editor would clarify in the journal that the translator has not accepted the wrong descriptions given by Dr Hell, and that he has not sought to hurt the sentiments of Muslims.
"The campaigners had him where they wanted him. Naturally, they gave a final twist to the dagger, for the translator was hardly the one who had to be brought to his knees."
"Those running Jamia realized that the matter could not be put to rest at the level of the translator. In November 1929 the Jamia magazine itself put out an announcement.
"Last month numerous national newspapers and magazines have objected to the publication of The Arab Civilization, the announcement said. We have consulted Maulana Mohammed Ali, Maulana Azad and Allama Iqbal. All three have expressed the opinion that the footnotes written by the translator for correcting the misunderstandings and mistakes of the author are neither sufficiently lucid nor well argued. A deeper criticism is needed. The vice chancellor of Jamia is at present in Hyderabad, the statement continued. He has been requested to look into the matter. He has promised to return very soon, and to try his best to remove the misgivings of the well-wishers of Jamia."
"The translator has been requested, Dr Zakir Hussain wrote, that he should consult these high personages and other members of the world of scholarship (the reference was quite clearly to the ulema) and write a detailed essay on the objectionable portions of this book in accordance with the advice received from these people.
"Notice the two points: (i) the translator—the ‘transgressor’ would be the word more appropriate in view of what the Jamia was agreeing to—should himself write the essay; (ii) he should do so after consulting those who had pronounced adversely on the book, and he should write in accordance with the advice they give.
"Not just that. This essay, wrote Dr Zakir Hussain, is to be published in the form of a volume and made available to all those who have already purchased the book. And a German translation is to be made available to Dr Hell."
"Notice the progress of the campaign: a few details about facts are swiftly raised to matters of Faith, to one’s fidelity to the Prophet.
"Notice the technique of whipping up a chorus.
"Notice that those who lend their voices to the chorus do so often without reading the book, indeed in one case without even reading the ‘review’ of the book written by the leader of the campaign.
"Notice the role of the Urdu newspapers and journals.
"Notice the role of the notables.
"Notice the presumption of the liberals that by bending they would save their skin, and thus be able to continue their ‘main work’.
"But see what the terms are which they have to agree to in the end as repentance.
"Each one of these features is repeated again and again in the assaults the ulema have launched since.
"The clamour for banning Rushdie’s book without reading it."
Arun Shourie gives details of how Maulana Azad was persecuted by the fundamentalists.
"Shah Waliullah was as fundamentalist as anyone can be, and as authoritarian in insisting on the enforcement of Islam as anyone can be. But seeing the fossilization which had gripped Islamic society, he advocated that ‘the doors of Ijtihad’ be opened again, that the revelations of the Quran and the deeds and enunciations of the Prophet ought to be reinterpreted. Seeing that few in eighteenth-century India understood Arabic, he translated the Quran into Persian. What happened? ‘The publication of a Persian translation of the Quran, which he had undertaken in the belief that it would help considerably in disseminating knowledge of the Holy Book,’ writes Professor Mujeeb in The Indian Muslims, ‘brought him into unpleasant prominence. The conservative Ulema accused him of innovation, strong opposition was aroused and once some people even went to the extent of hiring ruffians to beat him up...’ Sir Syed Ahmed Khan became the most dogged champion and rationalizer of British rule in India. He enunciated the two-nation theory—his words and propositions presaged to the dot what Jinnah was to proclaim in the 1930s and 1940s. But there was the other side to him: he argued vigorously against slavish adherence to precedents, he urged reinterpretation and reformulation of Islamic dogma. What happened? He was abused and reviled by the ulema. He was threatened with death. A fatwa declaring him guilty of kufr was obtained from the ulema at Mecca. From Iqbal to Maulana Azad to Dr Zakir Hussain, each was reduced to temporizing. It was not just that the particular reform he was urging was thereby foreclosed. What befell him, and the way he had to bend became a warning that deterred others."
"But it is not mere stratagems, it is actual power which has enabled the ulema to bury every reformist impulse. To start with, there was the pattern that was set during the Prophet’s own life: from the time he acquired control of Medina, Islam became indissolubly linked with the state. Subsequently, states far and wide came to be captured in the name of Islam. The rulers—often dissolute, often tyrannical—needed the ulema to provide rationalizations for their rulership. ... The ulema for instance came to have great say in applying the law: they assessed evidence, they decided which rule of law was applicable, they decided whether the accused was guilty or not, they decreed what punishment was to be inflicted on the guilty. Such power over the daily life of the individual, naturally gave them great power over the community, as distinct from merely the court, in the countryside as distinct from merely the capital."
" ... This hold has been tightened by the premise which has been dinned into every Muslim—that Islam does not concern merely the matters of the spirit, that it encompasses every detail of life. This is the claim of every totalitarian ideology—of Nazism, of Marxism-Leninism for instance—the claim namely that it has the right to regulate the totality of life. Just as this premise delivered total control to the party in Nazi and communist societies, it has been the doctrinal foundation of the vice-like hold which the ulema have acquired over Muslims."
" ... Eighth-century Arabia became not just the model, it became the mould. The state which the ulema could and would bring down on anyone who dared to disregard them was ferocious. In addition, there was the tradition of medieval, tribal societies from Arabia to Afghanistan—of enforcement through parastatal terrorism. To this day, no Muslim who speaks out against the ulema can afford to forget this lethal potential."
" ... The ulema control the mosques, they control the madrasahs and maktabs.
"They control every seminary: it is not just that they thereby control the mindset of those who will control the community in different geographical areas; the contacts and bonding, the ‘Old Boy Networks’ which are formed among course-mates at the seminaries give the ulema an unequalled capacity to ignite the entire community. Moreover, the ulema directly or indirectly control every single one of the organizations which are taken to speak in the name of Islam—the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Majlis-e-Mushawarat, the Tamir-e-Millat, the All India Shia Conference, etc. The Muslim who sets out to urge a new, liberal view has nothing even remotely comparable to these networks. Indeed, the organizations which had originally been set up to impart a different perspective have slid back into the grip of elements who are in awe of the ulema: the Aligarh Muslim University was to have provided modem education and a modern perspective to its wards; it fell to reactionary elements long ago, indeed during Sir Syed’s time itself—he scoffed at the fatwa when it was issued but soon, to keep the institution going, he had to agree to a compromise with the obscurantists: even his own interpretations of the texts, to say nothing of those of other innovators would be kept out of the classrooms, religious studies would be handed over to the traditionalists, to the very persons whose notions and perspectives Sir Syed held responsible for the stagnation of Muslim society. Similarly, the Jamia Millia Islamia was to have imparted a nationalist perspective, yet today its functionaries have to always be watchful lest someone charge them with not being Islamic enough.
"Next comes the Urdu press. It has been one of the most potent allies of, in some ways the instrument of the ulema, as we saw in reviewing the campaigns against Dr Zakir Hussain and Maulana Azad. We saw the same role and the same potency in the campaigns in 1992 against Mushirul Hasan, pro-vice-chancellor of Jamia Millia in Delhi, and Abid Reza Bedar, director of the Khuda Bakhsh Library in Patna. A shrill tone, wholesale distortions, creating echoes upon echoes of their allegations, fomenting an extreme insecurity and then presenting everything as an assault on Islam—these are its hallmarks. And they invariably end up being deployed to fortify the world view which the ulema want the community to retain.
"And then there is the effect of patronage. Funds from Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Iraq, or other ‘Islamic’ sources go to the ulema, to elements and organizations controlled by or beholden to them. The funds are almost never channelled to liberals. The Indian state is of course worse. As the ulema control the community, it is to the ulema, and to those who speak their language that the state genuflects. As the state has got weaker, the ulema have been able to press their campaigns with greater and greater ease. And in turn they have been able to fortify their hold over the community by demonstrating that it is to them that the state bends—on Shah Bano for instance; that it dare not step in their way: look at the audacity of their current campaign to set up a parallel structure of courts—the shariah courts—outside the legal system of the country.
"Now, the power of such an establishment rests on the flock being distanced from the rest, it rests on the followers being separate. And, secondly, on their being in a state of anxiety, in fact fear—the fear in particular that they are in imminent danger of being swallowed up by the surrounding mass.
"The life and outlook of the people of India have been syncretistic, they have been inclusive. And even within Islam, and in the state even under Islamic rule there have been exponents and promoters of that line—Akbar and Dara Shikoh down to the ones we saw attacked, Maulana Azad and Zakir Hussain. But the line which has prevailed has been the other one, the ideology of separateness."
"The liberal who happens to be a Hindu is so apologetic, he has internalized sham secularism so much, he is in any case so innocent of the texts—of Islam, of Hinduism, of our laws and our Constitution—and he has internalized double standards to such an extent that he has made silence on all matters Islamic, indeed toeing the fundamentalists’ line proof of secularism. The ‘secularists’ of the English press are a ready example. They will refer to Ali Mian as ‘the moderate, universally respected Muslim leader’, without bothering to read anything he has written. They will refer to sundry muftis and maulwis as ‘Muslim divines’. They will shut their eyes tight to what organizations like the All India Muslim Personal Law Board or the All India Milli Council are doing; and will jump in to shout and scream should any agency of the state take a step to uncover their activities. Worst of all, they will, by a Pavlovian reflex, weigh in on the same side as the ulema on issues, and insist that anyone who opposes that side is ‘communal’, ‘fascist’, ‘revanchist’."
" ... Taking the assertion of the ulema about the meaning being deep and difficult to discern is just a rationalization for not bothering to study the texts, it is a rationalization for avoiding the trouble that would ensue if one joined issue."
"Moreover, the liberal Muslim is as distant from the Muslim community as he is from the texts. Indeed, as he is in relation to the ulema, and the texts, he is not just distant, he is defensive. Far from showing that the way he has adopted—of acquiring the new learning and skills, of succeeding in professions—is the way, he feels guilty about having succeeded, as a person might be who has run away from the slum and made it but is constantly weighed down by the knowledge that his family is still wasting away in that ghetto.
"Distant, defensive, with neither resources nor organization, the liberal is easily frightened away by the minatory ranting of the fundamentalists. He seldom speaks out on ‘Islamic’ issues—he is not equipped to do so, in any case to be concerned about them, to work at them isn’t the thing that a secular, modern person should be seen doing. On the rare occasion he speaks, he does not speak the whole truth— ‘Showing up the terror to which the power to pronounce talaq subjects Muslim women will only help the enemies of Islam,’ inveigh the fundamentalists, and he subsides. When one Muslim country after another was modernizing Islamic personal law, the ulema here inveighed, ‘But they can do so as they are Islamic countries; here that cannot be allowed because this is not a Muslim country,’ and the liberal resigned himself to their assertion. As over the last five years some of the ‘Islamic’ countries fell into the hands of fundamentalists and started reverting to the older, iniquitous laws, the fundamentalists began asserting, ‘When Islamic countries are reintroducing the shariah, how can it be allowed to be undermined here?,’ and again the liberal resigned himself to their assertion."
"It is the ideology of Islam itself: it is totalitarian, and it is millenarian.
"It lays claim to regulate the totality of life. Hence it delivers to those who set themselves up to enforce the claim, control over every aspect of life.
"Second, it claims that the moment Islam prevails the millennium shall dawn. It follows that the one who does not surrender to it is thwarting that millennium, he is standing in the way of Allah—exactly as the one who did not surrender to communism was thwarting that millennium, exactly as he was standing in the way of history. Therefore, all means are not just permissible, not just justified, all means needed to put him out of harm’s way are mandated—they are mandated by the very one who mandated the Way, that is by Allah Himself; indeed, the mandate for them is implicit in, it is a necessary element of the mandate for the Way itself."
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January 09, 2022 - January 09, 2022.
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2. All of life Believers and Kafirs
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If you're not completely insensitive, skip this chapter.
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January 09, 2022 - January 09, 2022.
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3. Identity: from distinctiveness to assertiveness to aggressiveness
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January 09, 2022 - January 09, 2022.
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4. ‘Worse than All Creation’
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January 09, 2022 - January 09, 2022.
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5. Khilafat, independence and after Women and Shariah
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