The Reform Has To Be In One’s Attitude Towards The Religion Not In How Islam Is Interpreted, Understood And Practiced
By Najmul Hoda
8 November,
2020
With every
terror attack, clamour for reform in Islam goes up as a crisis is alleged in
the religion. The same happened after the beheadings in France in response to
Prophet Muhammad’s cartoons. People say that since Islam has remained
unreformed, its anachronistic understanding has been at the root of much of the
bad publicity that its more zealous followers have been inviting to it.
Verses from
the Quran are quoted to both arraign and absolve Islam. Defences are mounted
arguing whether these are to be understood literally or metaphorically, and to
be seen in their contextual terms or transcendental claims. Since much of the
contestations centre around the meanings of the canonical literature, the Quran
and the Hadith, it is hoped that if these were given a contemporaneous
interpretation, Islam would become more compatible with the modern world, and it
would cease to yield justifications for regressive practices and violent
actions.
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This
optimism tends to forget that religions don’t change much, and that the words
of scriptures can’t be erased and overwritten. Neither the verses can be
changed, nor their conventional understanding. As for the interpretation, there
is a limit to the point it can be stretched into yielding allegorical or
contextual meanings. In any case, believers don’t have any problem with either
the text or its age-old meaning. They try to mould their world in accordance
with the precepts of the religion. To them, stretching the meaning to measure
up to the present world may amount to a subversive reversal of order.
The reform,
if any, has to be in one’s attitude towards the religion, and not in how Islam
is interpreted, understood and practiced. The shift in focus from the
transcendent to mundane, divine to human, and religious to secular has to be
the basis of reform. If people continue to depend on religion for inspiration
and justification for their actions, and they don’t graduate to the higher
morality of secularism and modernity, no matter how they reinterpret their
religion, they would continue to regress. In any case, when it comes to
religion, the orthodox position, being of classical vintage, commands better
legitimacy.
Therefore,
rather than reformation of Islam, its relocation and reformulation may be a
better ideal. Like other religions in the modern age, Islam too should be
relocated to where religions belong — the private sphere. The longer any
religion remains part of the public sphere, higher the chances of its
politicisation and radicalisation.
Religion,
after all, is a way of worship. To say that one’s religion is a way of life is
a statement with little meaning. A way of life is the culture, of which,
religion is a constituent. However, little would change if the selfish motive
of personal salvation continued to disregard the public welfare. Therefore,
Islam has to be reformulated as a people friendly and welfare oriented religion
that inspires its followers to do good to people here and now, rather than
securing paradise for them after death. Such a secularisation would make people
humane rather than dogmatic, and compassionate rather than fanatic.
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Also Read:
Embrace What Is Different:
Quran and Hadith Stress on Building an Inclusive Society
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It’s
alright to say that the trajectory of European history can’t be the universal
template for other societies, but if we were to learn from it, successive
stages from renaissance’s humanism to religious reformation to enlightenment to
the rise of liberal, secular and democratic world, would have many lessons for
us. One of these could be that even the reformed religion was not good enough
for the imperatives of the modern world, and it had to be sequestered to the
private space in order to let reason have an unfettered movement which, in
turn, would enable the rise of higher secular morality.
The Muslims
were impelled into both reform and revival by the same impetus — the shock
caused by the loss of political ascendancy. Both the trends had the same
purpose — restoration of the lost glory. This could be one reason why reform
gave way to revivalism so easily, and almost all the late 19th century reform
movements from Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s in India to Muhammad Abduh’s and Rashid
Rida’s in Egypt petered out, making way for the militant Islamism.
Unlike
Christianity, Islam didn’t have to suffer prolonged persecution. It progressed
from acquiring a chieftainship to a State to an empire with lightning rapidity,
which turned it into a statist ideology. The religion-cum-ideology was further
elaborated into the legal structure of the empire. This led to the unquestioned
equation of religion with shariat, and of shariat with law. Therefore, any
reform in Islam had to come through the legal route. Accordingly, a long
forgotten tool called Ijtihad was brought into re-circulation. This terminology
(coming from the same route as jihad) connotes intellectual exertion for
deriving a religious ruling in such cases as the Quran and the Hadith are
silent about. In contemporary Islamic discourses, Ijtihad is looked up as a
noble ideal, but, for obvious reasons, there has been no substantial effort
towards its realisation. Most of the Muslim States — from Indonesia, Malaysia,
Bangladesh, Pakistan and Turkey in Asia to Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia in Africa
— having adopted the modern legal system, pious platitudes notwithstanding, are
not going back to the archaic Shariah laws. And those which do — the likes of
ISIS or Taliban — have no use for Ijtihad.
No wonder
that the modern and scientific reinterpretation of Islam has not moved an inch
beyond where Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-98) left it. Even though it may be possible,
it’s going to be a fruitless exercise and, therefore, undesirable for both the
modern and the orthodox Muslims.
Original Headline: Islam’s crisis doesn’t need
Reformation. It calls for relocation
Source: The Print
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-ideology/the-reform-be-one’s-attitude/d/123448
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