By Arshad Alam, New
Age Islam
9 November
2020
Terror in
the name of Islam is indeed one of the biggest challenges facing Muslim
communities across the world. One beheading becomes the occasion for polarised
and acerbic debates about the relation of Islam with democracy,
multiculturalism and secularism. Reams get written about how the current
scourge of terrorism is the product of Islamic theology. On the other hand,
there are others who want to contextualise this phenomenon as the natives
striking back at their former masters. While the world debates the ‘real’ causes
behind Islamic terrorism, it is also important to underline that there are
certain important changes taking place across the Muslim world. However, these
changes are hardly debated in the spirit in which they should be: how is it
that some Muslim societies are able to rally behind the ideas of freedom and
human rights despite having been under years of Islamic rule?
Two
examples come to mind right away: Sudan, and more recently, the UAE. In July
this year, the Sudanese government introduced a slew of legal reforms,
cancelling the earlier regime’s sharia centric jurisprudence. The most
important of these changes was the abolishing of death penalty for apostasy.
The Islamist regime of Omar al-Bashir advertised this law as the centrepiece of
Islamic worldview. While many were sent to the gallows, the most infamous case
was that of Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag, a pregnant woman who was sentenced to
be hanged after she married Christian man in 2014. Luckily for her, she escaped
the noose by fleeing the country but others were not so lucky. The scrapping of
death penalty is a momentous decision and Muslims the world over must celebrate
it as they are worst victims of this law. Although apostasy remains on the
statue books as a crime, the general direction of the reforms gives a lot of
hope that eventually it will be de-criminalised. Along with this crucial
reform, alcohol is now permitted for non-Muslims and a slew of changes have
been targeted to empower women. Female genital mutilation, practiced since long
in Sudan, has been criminalised, giving huge relief to women advocacy groups.
Also, women can now travel without the authorization of male guardians. While
for many, these rights are taken for granted; but for women in many Muslim
countries, even such freedoms are new and therefore must be welcomed. The
medieval and barbaric practice of public flogging, still practiced in Muslim
countries like Saudi Arabia, was also abolished. More recently, in September,
Sudan separated Islam and the state, thus paving the way for a secular
governance of the country. These are momentous decisions, the implications of
which need to be debated throughout the Muslim world.
More
recently, the UAE changed its law to allow the free consumption of alcohol,
living together of unmarried couples and criminalizing honour killings. While
alcohol was allowed earlier, but it has now been further relaxed in the sense
that one does not need any permit for its use. The more important change is the
criminalizing of honour killings which will bring a huge relief for many women.
Earlier, men could escape the law even after assaulting women in the name of
protecting families’ honour. This code of honour discriminated against women as
it compromised their freedom in terms of choosing partners, etc. In the case of
UAE, the loosening of these restrictions is certainly related to the fact that
immigrants, many of them non-Muslims, outnumber the citizens nine to one. In
order to attract investment and emerge as the dominant service economy in the
region, the UAE has to appear to be liberal in terms of lifestyle. Whatever be
the reasons, these measures will hugely impact the lives of Muslims living
there and certainly improve the image of the emirate worldwide. As Muslims,
there is a need to cheer such measures, even though democracy may still be a
distant dream for the people of the region.
One should
also not forget the early example of Tunisia where the largest Muslim religious
party, the Enhada, ultimately sided with the secularists to argue that the
sharia will not become the basis of laws in that country. As a religious
movement, it must be a very big decision on the part of Enhada to publically
disavow the sharia, especially given the fact that in early years the movement
drew inspiration from Islamist ideologues like Syed Qutb. The fact that it did
so and yet could retain its legitimacy in the eyes of the people only goes on
to show that Islam is not some ossified ideology, fixed and frozen for all
eternity but rather is malleable and hence can be called upon to redefine
itself with changing circumstances.
We should
also not forget that Sudan and UAE recently recognised the state of Israel,
another momentous event. It is momentous because the dominant interpretation of
Islam calls upon the Muslims not to trust the Jews, far less have any alliance
with them. With recognizing Israel, Muslims will eventually enter into multiple
alliances with the Jewish people. And yet, we do not see that the Muslim world
is up in arms against such a move. If the Muslims are wise enough to effect a
separation between the dictates of theology and the demands of politics when it
comes to Israel, maybe eventually they will demand the same in their respective
countries too.
In all
these countries, what we are witnessing is a move away from sharia as the
source of Islamic law and lifestyle. Islamists the world over have argued that
the existence of an Islamic state or a Muslim society is meaningless without
the implementation of sharia. Muslims in these countries are saying precisely
the opposite: that they do not need the sharia as the basis of organising their
societies. Many who oppose the implementation of the sharia, like the Enhada,
are staunchly Islamic but their Islam is a source of personal and not a
political identity. This divesting of Islam from the political sphere which
these countries have successfully done must be debated in other Muslim
countries as well.
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Arshad Alam is a
columnist with NewAgeIslam.com
URl: https://newageislam.com/the-war-within-islam/muslims-pay-attention-changes-sudan,/d/123420
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