Muslim women over the centuries have been shortchanged by men who have misread the message of the Koran.
There are three legacies from the past which Muslims must discard – the ossified sharia which conflicts with the Koran; the notion of the "Islamic state" which the Koran does not support and which never existed in history; jehad, which is a perversion of the concept as propounded in the Koran.
Any reform in the Islamic world must grapple honestly with four related tasks: (1) Interpretation of some Koranic verses in the light of the times, as against others which are of enduring relevance for all time. (2) Weeding out hadith (compilation of the Prophet's sayings) of dubious credibility. (3) Rejection of the authority of the ulema (clerics). (4) A sound appreciation of Islam in history, especially the role of the first four Caliphs, as distinct from Islam in the Koran.
It was only a century after the Prophet's death that the task of compiling the hadith was undertaken. There is not the slightest doubt about the integrity and authenticity of the Koran. One cannot say that of the hadith. The Prophet died at Medina on June 8, 632. Al-Bukhari, a man of piety and compiler of the most respected of the hadith, was born in the ninth century (194 of the Hejira; he died in 256). He was methodical. Having collected 600,000 hadith, he retained only 7,257 omitting 4,000 repetitions.
"Thus less than two centuries after the Prophet's death there were already 596,725 false hadith." Al-Bukhari told off a king who wanted him to read some excerpts in private. "Go," he told the emissary, "tell your master that I hold knowledge in high esteem, and I refuse to drag it into the antechambers of sultans." Islamic history would have been different if others had his integrity.
Charfi rightly says that "the Quran is the only source that escapes all these criticisms of unreliability". Out of a total of 6,236 verses, revealed over 22 years - 12 in Mecca, the rest in Medina - between 200-500 are estimated to be law-like rules.
Mutazilites were the ulema whose school of thought became important in the mid-eighth century (Christian Era) and who ascribed a key role to reason in their research - as opposed to those who constantly invoked the hadiths in their creation of new laws. The Mutazilites explained the Koran itself by constantly referring to reason. They made reason the very criterion of religious law. In this way, they were able to develop extremely bold legal constructs. They were hunted down as infidels as early as 846 (CE). Their writings were thoroughly destroyed. It is only in the last century or less, since the rediscovery of ancient manuscripts, that we have had direct access to their writings. "With the crushing of the Mutazilites, the spirit of imitation carried the day over the spirit of reflection." The gates of ijtihad (reasoning), itself a source of Islamic law, were closed.
When Maudoodi argued that an Islamic state was necessary "to enforce" Islamic law he proclaimed his intellectual bankruptcy, political opportunism and lack of moral purpose. Has Islam no meaning or message for Muslims in Europe, the United States and India? The Prophet did not found a state; did not name a successor, and consistently advised: "You know better than I the affairs of the world below." His mission was stated in the Koran in restrictive terms: "You are only a messenger" and "Your mission is only to give clear warning" (16:82). He had a duty to preach; no power to command.
Mohamed Charfi recalls what ensued after the Prophet's death. The successors, the Caliphs, were men of piety, but they were also men of this world. "Muslims need a critical re-reading of their history in order to recover their religion in its original purity, free of the deposits left by the vicissitudes of history. The first two Caliphs were great political strategists; their deeds could not have been successful without the ruses, calculations and alliances inherent in all political action. Reasons of state explain a number of their decisions. For example, when Abu Bakr learned that Khalid ibn al-Walid (whom he had placed in charge of his troops during the war of the apostates) was committing crimes unworthy of a Muslim leader, he left him in his position in order to continue benefiting from his great military skills. The first two Caliphs were great politicians who served the cause they had given themselves with both intelligence and single-minded commitment. But they were not saints. Unfortunately the third Caliph, Othman, was even less of a saint. It may be possible to criticise the action of the first two Caliphs, but only in the name of principles that appear evident to us today but which, in their own time, had no purchase on relations between peoples. As to their personal conduct, they were above all suspicion. Things were very different, however, in the case of the third Caliph. His twelve-year reign, the longest of the three, was marked by nepotism and mismanagement of the public purpose... . A number of leading figures, including old companions of the Prophet such as the celebrated Abu Dhar al-Ghifari, vigorously protested against this outrageous conduct on the part of the head of state. Othman responded by issuing orders for corporal punishment against some and banishment against others."
After Ali's assassination in 661 began the Omayyad Caliphate's rule by dynastic succession. On March 23, 1924, Kemal Ataturk abolished the Caliphate in Istanbul whose cause Gandhi had taken up along with the Ali Brothers. During this long era "religion was used in the service of political ends". Three of the founders of the four schools of law were beaten up.
Contrary to myth, the first four "Rightly Guided" Caliphs were not elected. "The Islamic state, envisaged neither by the Koran nor the sunna, is a man-made institution that has used religion for political ends, to justify military conquests, exploitation of the people and the pleasure-seeking of Caliphs. Summarising and commenting on the thought of Ali Abderrazak, Abdu Filali Ansari writes that the theory of the Caliphate `did violence to the community, religion and reason'. This critique of the Caliphate cannot be taxed with hostility or denigration with regard to Islam as a religion and culture. During its golden age, Islamic civilisation was particularly dazzling; the Islamic contribution to science and universal knowledge has not been insignificant, and the importance of the philosophical works of Farabi, Kindi and especially Averroes no longer has to be demonstrated. The same is true of the invention of algebra or Khawarizmi's research in mathematics. In medieval Europe, medicine was taught from textbooks in Arabic or translated from the Arabic of Avicenna, Ibn Zohr or ar-Razi." (Vide Wilferd Madelung; The succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate; Cambridge University Press, 1997.)
Islam is not incompatible with human rights (vide the writer's article "Human rights in Islam"; Frontline, October 23, 1998). Nor is Islam incompatible with pluralism and its corollary, a secular state. Muslims are enjoined to respect Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Jesus as Prophets of God. Mohammad is only the last of the Prophets. "We make no division between any of them" (2:129-132). More, there are other prophets who are not mentioned (40:78). Indeed, "to every people [was sent] a messenger" (47).
Charfi's conclusion is sound: "Although, in the Prophet's time, the word umma could denote solidarity of the oppressed against their oppressors, the idolatrous Quraysh, and although, at a certain moment in history, it became charged with the sense of a struggle for liberty, the concept has today become an anachronism. The Muslim religion, which formally recognises neither a clergy nor a church, should have been and ought to become the religion that encourages the ending of individual alienation and the full affirmation of individual liberty and sovereignty in the choice of beliefs, ideas and behaviour. But instead, because of its history, it has been the religion in which the individual dissolves into the community, loses all autonomy and endures the most oppressive enslavement to society and the state. The legitimation of force by the ulema has prevented the emergence of a theory of democracy and human rights."
J.M.S. Baljon notes that "the Koran, indeed in support of its message also appeals to man's intellectual faculties" and cites five such verses which justify A.J. Arberry's assertion of the Koran's "acceptance of reason as an ally to faith" (Modern Muslim Koran Interpretation (1880-1960); page 124).
Suha Taji-Farouki's volume contains illuminating essays on 10 Muslim intellectuals who performed such a task. One of them, Nurcholish Madjid of Indonesia, merits particular attention. "Contextualism was his weapon of choice to put an end to such absurdities, as well as to tackle more serious issues such as the relations between Islam and other religions, and death as the penalty for apostasy. It had to be recognised that the traditional formulations of fiqh (law) were essentially contingent, its rulings conditioned by time and place. He proceeded by what he called `contextualised ijtihad', and argues that, although modern as a term, contextualised ijtihad was exercised during the earliest period of Islamic history, even though it had not been incorporated into jurisprudence."
The editor, Suha Taji-Farouki, recalls that "during the last few decades, Muslims have read the Quran in a rich multiplicity of ways". The volume illustrates the diversity. It may be contrasted with the state of Muslim law whose origin and history Knut Vikor and Wael B. Hallaq's volumes ably trace. They are very dependable textbooks based on thorough research.
