Critiquing Islam: Mahmoud Taha And The Second Message Of Islam; Makkan Verses Of Peace Versus Madinan Verses Of War
By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
28 June
2021
The
Meccan Verses Of Peace, Persuasion And Egalitarianism Represent The Original
Intent And Message Of Islam
Main
Points:
• Traditional
exegesis of the Quran abrogates the peaceful Meccan verses in favour of war-
time Madinan verses.
• The
notion of Sharia, built on this erroneous principle, will always be
discriminatory towards women and non-Muslims. This is totally opposed to the
fundamental teachings of Islam.
• Muslims
must reverse the emphasis and recover the Meccan verses as the guiding light of
Islam.
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Mahmoud Mohammed Taha/ Drawing by HUSSEIN MIRGHANI, Sudan
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Like most
religious texts, the Quran contains verses which promote peace, toleration and
pluralism but at other places calls upon the believers to kill the infidels.
Muslims have wrestled with this contradiction for centuries. The early exegetes
resolved this contradiction by propounding the theory that the latter verses
revealed in the Quran abrogated (naskh) the earlier ones. Since the verses
which normally speak of peace and non-violence were revealed earlier in Mecca,
they got abrogated by the war like verses revealed later in Medina. Rather than
solving any problems, this method of abrogation produced an Islam which became
supremacist. It made Muslims intolerant towards any other faith tradition
except their own. This method becomes especially problematic when the Quran is
being read within a multireligious society. The traditionalist reading of the
Quran has direct consequences for inter-community relations in any
multicultural society.
It was
within such a multireligious context of Sudan that Mahmoud Mohammed Taha
(1909-1985) sought to foster a radically new reading of the Quran. While
accepting the chronology of revelation, he posited that the Meccan verses which
talked about peace, persuasion and brotherhood is the core message of Islam.
The later Madinan verses arose out of a special circumstance and hence its
message was temporal in character. In Medina, Muslims were struggling to
establish themselves as a faith community. With those circumstances no longer
existing, Taha argues that Muslims must return to the Meccan verses and
consider them as the final message of Islam. The first message of Islam (in Mecca)
is therefore its second and final message.
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Also
Read: Critiquing Islam:
Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and Quranic Hermeneutics
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As we will
see, the insistence that the Meccan verses should be read as the second and
final message of Islam is not just tinkering with chronology but has deep
implications for the understanding and implementation of Sharia and the
imagination of what constitutes an Islamic state. We know that Islamic Sharia
is based on the texts of the second stage, the revelations in Medina. Taha
argues that in this stage, God was responding, through the Prophet, to the
actual needs of an existing society which was at a particular stage in its
historic development. To that end, some aspects of the earlier messages were
abrogated from a legal point of view although its moral validity continued.
Taha argues (and it is here that he differs fundamentally from the traditional exegetes)
that the Naskh was in fact a postponement and not a final and conclusive
repeal. Taking this position, Taha points out that the message of Islam was and
continues to be one of complete liberty and equality of human beings,
irrespective of religion, sex or faith.
The
historical Sharia is thus not the whole of Islam but merely a level of Islamic
law which suited a particular stage of human development. Since that context
(the state of Medina) does not exist anymore, it follows that the extant Sharia,
as understood by Muslims, should be made totally irrelevant. Human society has
reached the stage where the original message of Islam, revealed in Mecca,
should become the standard through which Muslims should relate to the world.
According to Taha, this was a message of universal brotherhood and one where
women and non-Muslims will have full rights as citizens.
Moreover,
‘the Meccan and the Medinan verses differ, not because of the time and place of
their revelations, but essentially because of the audience to whom they are
addressed’. The phrase ‘O Believers’ (in the Medinan context) addresses a
particular community while ‘O Mankind’ (in the Meccan context) refers to all
people. The verse ‘you have received a Messenger from amongst yourself who is
deeply distressed by your suffering, cares for you, and he is tender and
merciful to the believers’ (9: 128) is in contrast to the verse ‘God is truly
tender and merciful upon mankind (2: 143). And the reason for this, Taha argues
is that these messages were meant for very different audiences. In the former
God is addressing a particular community at a particular time in history while
in the latter, He is addressing the whole mankind. Similarly, Taha argues, the
hypocrites were mentioned for the first time in Medina during the ten years of
revelation, but never during the thirteen years of revelation in Mecca because
there were no hypocrites there.
Thus, the
Quran is both transcendent and contextual and it is the former message of Islam
which Muslims need to now recover as the final message. To this effect, Taha
also makes a distinction between al-Muslimeen and al-Mumineen
(those who submit) and argues that it is the latter (as submitters) that is
demanded by the Quran. What Taha is basically arguing that Muslims must cease
to exist as a political identity and should only exist with a universal
identity which is characterized by submission to God. It follows then that
rather than following the Sunna, anyone who submits to God is qualified to be
called a Muslim, thus erasing the distinction between different religious
identities. Rather than being parochial, the need of the hour is to recover the
universal message of Islam which was witnessed during the Meccan period.
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Also
Read: Critiquing Islam: Hamed Abdel Samad
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Muslims
today, especially those who want to move ahead with times, are beset with a
profound dilemma. They have the choice to either implement an inherently
discriminatory Sharia or to discard it completely and strive to establish a
secular state. Both options are untenable for many Muslims who do not want to
let go of their religion but at the same time are not happy with its dominant
interpretation. Mahmoud Taha shows a way forward: to evolve Islamic law in such
a way that it’s discriminatory features automatically become redundant.
Unfortunately,
Muslims were not ready for this message and Taha was executed for apostasy. The
judge in his order made approving references to rulings from al-Azhar and the
Saudi funded Muslim World League. The current crisis in Sudan between Muslims
and Christians started with the imposition of Sharia in 1983, something Taha
was arguing against. The Muslim world was denied another the opportunity to
engage with another original mind whose ideas had the potential to the change
the world.
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Arshad
Alam is a columnist with NewAgeIslam.com
URL:
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism