Freshening Up Our Understanding of Islam

[mohammad]

Published: 18/11/2002
By: Ulil Abshar-Abdalla

First, an interpretation of Islam that is not literalistic, that is
substantial, that is contextual and that is in step with the ever-
changing civilization of humanity.

This is the translation of "Menyegarkan Kembali Pemahaman Islam",
published by Kompas, November 18th, 2002

In my view Islam is first and foremost a living "organism", a
religion that evolves in accordance with the pulse of humankind's
development. Islam is not a static monument that was carved in the
7th century CE and thereafter regarded as a beautiful "statue" that
may not be touched by the hand of history.

As I see it, the tendency to make an unchanging monument of Islam is
very prominent at present and the time has come for clear voice to
combat this tendency.

Below I will put forward a number of basic thoughts as a simple
effort to "freshen" the Islamic thought that in my view has gone
stale - it is treated as a "package" that can hardly be queried or
discussed, a divine set of doctrines that is placed before us with
the curt message: take it or leave it! This way of presenting Islam
is extremely hazardous for the progress of Islam itself.

The sole route which can lead to the progress of Islam is to raise
the question of how we interpret this religion. To move in this
direction, several things are needed.

First, an interpretation of Islam that is not literalistic, that is
substantial, that is contextual and that is in step with the ever-
changing civilization of humanity.

Second, an interpretation of Islam that can separate out whatever is
the product of the local culture from the values which are basic. We
have to be able to distinguish those teachings which reflect Arabian
cultural influence from those which don't. Islam is contextual, in
the sense that its universal values have to be translated into
particular contexts - Arabian, Malay, Central Asian and so on. But
the differing contextual forms are merely cultural and we are not
obliged always to conform to them. Any aspects of Islam which are
reflections of Arab culture, for instance, are not binding on us.
Examples of what we do not have to take over, because they are
merely expressions of a particular local Islam in Arabia, are the
jilbab (female head covering), the amputation of hands (for theft),
retaliation (for death or injury), stoning (for adultery) and
obligatory beards and gowns of particular styles. What have to be
followed are the universal values which underlie these practices.
The essence of wearing the jilbab is to conform to a standard of
public decency. What is generally regarded as decent is obviously
flexible and may change in accordance with the development of
culture. So it is with the other practices mentioned.

Third, the Muslim people should not regard themselves as a community
or "nation" (ummat) which is cut off from other groups. The ummat of
humankind are a universal family who are united by their very
humanity. Humanism is a value in line with, and not in opposition
to, Islam. The ban on inter-religious marriage, in casu between a
Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man, is no longer relevant. The Quran
itself never explicitly forbids it, because the Quran espouses a
universalist view that people are on the same level, irrespective of
differences of religion. All those legal products of classical Islam
which discriminate between Muslims and non-Muslims should be amended
on the basis of the universal principle of human equality.

Fourth, we need a social structure that clearly distinguishes
between political power and religious power. Religion is a private
matter, while the ordering of public life is entirely the product of
the community reaching agreement through democratic deliberation.
Certainly it is to be hoped that the universal values of religion
will contribute to the formation of public values, but the
particular doctrines and worship practices of each religion are an
internal matter for that religion.

In my opinion, "the law of God", as most Muslims understand that
concept, does not exist. For instance the law of God concerning
theft, buying and selling, marriage, government and so on. What do
exist are general principles, which in the classical Islamic
tradition of legal study are called maqasid al-shari'ah, i.e. the
general goals of Islamic law. These values are the protection of
religious freedom, reason, property, the family and honor. How these
values are translated into any given historical and social context
is something the Muslims must work out for themselves
through "ijtihad" (intellectual endeavor).

***

How do we locate the position of the Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon
him, in the context of this kind of thinking? I view him as a
historical figure who should be the object of critical study (and so
not become just an always admired mythical figure by ignoring his
human aspects and possibly weaknesses), yet he must be a model to be
followed (qudwah al-hasanah).

How should we follow the Prophet? Here, I disagree with the dominant
view. In his endeavors to translate Islam into the social-political
context of Medina, he certainly had to encounter many constraints.
Indeed, he succeeded in Medina in making a translation of the social
and spiritual aspirations of Islam, but the Islam thereby realized
was a historical, particular and contextual Islam.

We are not obliged to imitate the Prophet literally, because what he
did at Medina was to "negotiate" between the universal values of
Islam and the concrete social situation at Medina with all its
constraints; the result was a "trade-off" between the universal and
the particular.

The Islamic ummat must strive-in-interpretation (ijtihad) to seek a
new formula to translate those values in the context of its own life
situation. The Prophet's

"Islam" at Medina was one possible translation of the universal
Islam onto the earth's face. But there are possibilities of
translating Islam in other ways, in different contexts. Islam at
Medina was one among others, one of the forms of Islam that have
existed on earth.

Consequently the Muslims should not come to a halt looking to the
Medina model only, because life goes on, in the direction of
betterment and improvement. For me, revelation did not cease with
the age of the Prophet; it still works and descends to mankind.
True, verbal revelation ceased with the Quran, but non-verbal
revelation continues in the form of ijtihad by human reasoning.

The great discoveries of human history as part of the endeavor to
improve the quality of life are divine revelations too, because they
were the fruits of human reason, which is a gift of God. This is why
all the works of human creativity, from whatever religious group,
are the possession of the Muslims. There is no point in Muslims
erecting a great wall between Islamic culture and Western culture,
pronouncing the one superior and the other low, because all cultures
are the products of human endeavor and consequently belong to all
nations, and thus to Muslims too.

The Muslims have to understand that Islam as interpreted by a
certain group is not absolutely true, so there must be a readiness
to accept truth from all sources, including those outside Islam. Let
each group value the right of others to interpret Islam in their own
way; what has to be combatted is every effort to absolutize a
religious viewpoint.

I would go further and say that all good and positive values,
wherever they are, are in their true nature Islamic values. Islam --
as Cak Nur and a number of others have pointed out-- are "generic
values" which can be found in Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism,
Judaism, Taoism, in local religions and beliefs, and elsewhere. It
may be that there is "Islamic" truth in the philosophy of Marxism.

I am no longer looking at the form but at the substance. Islamic
convictions and practices embraced by people who call themselves
Muslims may be only a "garment" and a form; this is not what is
important. The essential thing is the value that is concealed behind
the form.

How foolish it is when people bicker over the different garments
they wear, while forgetting that the heart of the matter is to guard
the dignity of men and women as civilized creatures. All religions
are garments, means (wasilah), tools directed towards a fundamental
end: the surrender of the self to the All-True. There have been
periods when religious people thought that the "garment" was
absolute and all-in-all, so that they squabbled over those
differences in outward form. But the time for such squabbling is
past.

***

The enemy of all religions is injustice. The value that Islam
stresses is justice.

The mission of Islam that I regard as most important now is how to
erect justice on the face of the earth, especially in the political
and economic fields (also, of course, the cultural). I don't want to
erect the jilbab, restore the segregation of women, conserve the
proper conformation of the beard, regulate the shape of the trousers
and other fine distinctions that I regard as quite secondary
(furu'iyyah). Justice cannot be only sermonized about, but must be
realized in the structure of the system and in the rules of the
game, the laws and so on and it must be realized in deeds.

The present efforts to implement Islamic (shari'ah) law are for me a
demonstration of the incapacity of the Muslim ummat to face up to
the problems that are pressing on them and deal with them in a
rational manner. The ummat take the view that all problems will
automatically be solved as soon as the shari'ah, in its most
traditional and dogmatic form, is applied on the earth.

Human problems cannot be solved by simply referring to the "law of
God" (to repeat, I do not believe in any "law of God", I only
believe in divine values which are universal), but must be dealt
with by resorting by the laws or regularities (sunnah) which Allah
himself has implanted in each field of endeavor. The field of
politics knows its own intrinsic laws, so does the field of
economics, so does the field of society and so on.

The Prophet is supposed to have said: man aradad dunya fa'alaihi
bil `ilmi, wa man aradal akhirata fa'alaihi bil `ilmi; whoever wants
to overcome the problems of world, let him do it by science, and
whoever wants to attain happiness in the next world, let him do that
by science too. Each field has its own rules and principles, and
cannot arbitrarily refer to the law of God without first doing the
appropriate research. Each science, in its own field, continuously
develops, in accordance with mankind's evolution. In that sense the
divine sunnah also changes

It goes without saying that laws which regulate each field of life
must be subordinated to the primary value, namely justice. Therefore
the Islamic shari'ah is only a collection of basic values which are
abstract and universal. How these values are realized and can
fulfill the need to deal with a particular matter in a particular
period is left entirely to humankind's own ijtihad

The view that the shari'ah is a "complete package" fully made up, a
prescription from God that settles every problem in every age, is a
manifestation of ignorance and incapacity to understand the sunnah
of God itself. To put forward the shari'ah as a solution to all
problems is a form of mental laziness, or even further a way of
fleeing from problems, a form of escapism using the law of God as an
excuse.

It is this escapism which is the source of the decline of Islam in
the world. I cannot accept this kind of laziness, especially when it
is clothed in the excuse that all this is for the sake of
implementing the divine law. Do not forget: there is no law of God.
What exists is the divine sunnah and the universal values which all
human beings possess.

The most dangerous enemy of Islam at the present time is dogmatism,
a kind of closed conviction that a particular doctrine is an
infallible medicine for all problems and ignores the fact that human
life is continually evolving, and that the development of
civilization from the past to the present is the result of common
endeavors, an accumulation of achievements supported by all nations.

Every doctrine which wants to build a wall between "us" and "them",
between the hizbul Lah (party of Allah) and the hizbush shaithan
(party of satan), with a narrow interpretation of these two terms,
between "the West" and "Islam"; such a doctrine is a social disease
which will destroy basic values of Islam itself, the value of the
equal dignity of the human race and the value that we are all
members of one world.

The separation between "us" and "them" as the basic root of
dogmatism denies the fact that truth can be studied anywhere, in the
environment that is called "ours", but also in "their" environment.
In my view, the knowledge of God is greater and broader than just
what is found in the pages of the Quran. The science of God is the
totality of all the truths inscribed on all the pages of the Holy
Books as well as the non-Holy ones, plus the pages of knowledge
produced by human reason, as well as the truths not yet spoken, and
so not printed in any book. Thus the truth of God is greater than
Islam itself, considered as a religion that is embraced by a social
entity called the Islamic ummat. The truth of God is greater than
the Quran, the Hadith (prophetic traditions) and the entire corpus
of exegetic books produced throughout the history of Islam.

Because of this, Islam is actually better regarded as a "process"
which never ceases than as a "religious institution" that is dead,
completed, stiff, archaic and a restraint on freedom. The verse
Innaddina `indal Lahi Islam (Q 3:19) is more appropriately
translated "Verily the path of true religiousness is the relentless
process that ends in submission (to the All-True)."

Without any feeling of shyness or awkwardness, I say that all
religions are on a road like that, a long road towards the All-
Truthful. So all religions are true, but with variations in the
level and depth to which they "live" that religious road. All
religions belong to the same extended family: the family of the
lovers of the way to the truth which will never end. So, fastabiqu
al-khayrat, says the Quran (2:148): "compete in experiencing the
road of religiousness".

The fundamental requirement to understand Islam aright is always to
remember, however we interpret the religion, that the prime
criterion is benefit (maslahat) for humankind. Religion is a
blessing on the human race, and as humans are an organism that
always develops, quantitatively and qualitatively, religion must
also be able to develop itself in accordance with the needs of
humanity. What exists is the laws of humanity, not the law of God,
because it is people who are the stake holders who have a vital
interest in all discussions of religious matters.

If Islam is to be dragged into an interpretation which is precisely
in conflict with the welfare of mankind or even oppresses the human
race, then that kind of Islam will have become a fossil religion
that is no long useful to humanity.

Let us all seek an Islam that is fresher, more enlightened, more
able to be of benefit to mankind. Let us abandon the rigid,
inflexible Islam that has become a nest of dogmatism which oppresses
human welfare.

Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, Co-ordinator of the Liberal Islam Network
(JIL), Jakarta

(Translated by Ulil Abshar-Abdalla)

URL:http://islamlib.com/en/page.php?page=article&id=325