My Perspective on Islam

Bravo!

Thankyou for this piece. I don`t think one can disagree much with your conclusions.

People by the way just to point out the eminent Pakistani Islamic scholar Fazlurrahman, that the author mentions, is the Muslim Modernists who was based in the US and not Maulana Fazlu... lest Indians get any wrong ideas especially after fazlu`s kissin` and makin` out session in India.

I think a brilliant article no doubt.

`I am referring here, as some of you would know from my previous writings, to the debates between the radical Mutazitlite and the conservative Asharite schools of theology, both of which were regarded as mainstream and ``within the tradition``.`

Brilliant ... !!!

I am buyin the book dude...

-Manto

Another very interesting article by the writer!

While I understand that three fourths of the world (parts of america included) have ``grievances`` with US policy, it would be edifying to discuss various aspects of fundamentalist ``grievances``-esp. from people like bin Laden.

Rasheed Talib:

No need to worry. There is no `controversey` anymore.

The shock-tactics just won`t work now that the inter-net is full of all kind of `controversies`.

Save your time and money. You and your book will be ignored. A striptease has some value for its novelty & shamelessness in a clean society. Now the striptease is being performed by every tom dick & harry--and they are even getting hitched to each other. The senses , in this age of sattelite & inyernet, have been numbed by exposure & `controversy`. In a 500-channel digital universe viewers have their own `ummah`. Reading such books is passe`. Academics are no longer considered to be learned. The younger generation is on a roll....and they are muslims and they are flaunting it. No amount of `controversial` dust can obscure this fact. The humanist & liberal , commie & athiest of yesteryears, is now on the defensive--and that is a very pleasant view. Muslims are tremendously happy that at least now they are considered as an adversary, a threat, an enemy--far, far better than not being noticed & denied the existence of an ummah.

Let Ibne-Warraq and Ibne-Sina carry out this `noble` task. At least they have declared themselves atheists and should have no fear from any quarter.

The blanket just does`nt let go. Why?

islamic manifesto, that should be the name of your book. I liked the section, situating quran, whcih is a classic marxian term, situating koran in the historical context.
I have to agree with you, islam is progressively becoming the religion of the oppressed, spreading through the black ghettos of newyork and the prisons through out the west. In that sense the vision of ummah is no different from the uniting of the proletariate. As the marxist would say, the golden age of islam can come only when the whole world is taken over by islamist, the global marxian revolution.

I have only one request to you, Karl Marx was one of the greatest thinkers ever lived, will you let him have some peace in his grave. Leave the opiate of the masses as it is, dont turn it into a revolutionary elixir.

Talib saheb:
Having read your earlier articles, this does not come as a surprise. However, for those of us outside the ummah, it is hard to see where Muslims are headed. It seems that when it comes to the matter of their faith, most Muslims will accept the interpretations (tafseers) of the Maulanas who have spent most of their lives studying Quran, hadith and sharia than of laymen from other fields whose interest in religion is secondary, if not peripheral. You may be able to convince a highly educated elite but not the vast majority who have been weaned by the teaching that not a single sentence in the Book is to be questioned. To do that, you will first have to destroy Qoms, Deobands, Azhars, and whichever is the fountainhead of Wahabis.

Regardless of whether Mutzalites were right or wrong, is it possible to separate the relgious from the political in Islam? Is it possible to say that religion is a matter of personal belief only and should have no place in determing what kind of society there should be? In othe words, to somehow prove that the clause ``to you, your religion and to me, mine`` overrides every other message in the Quran. If it is possible to separate religion and politics in Islam, then the matter of what those beliefs are assumes lesser signficance.

In our current context the term Islamic Fundamentalism is used not only to indicate a belief in literal scripture, but also denotes a willingness to commit violence in the name of religion. While it’s important to examine scripture and even come up with an enlightened reading and a new interpretation, but I hope that you would examine the expansion of Islam in history. The following letter may illustrate the point.

In 633 A.D 12 A.H

“From Khalid b. al Walid to the ruler of the Persians:
Peace be upon whosoever follows right guidance. Praise be to God. Who has scattered your servants, wrested your sovereignty away, and rendered your plotting weak. Whoever worships the way we worship, faces the direction we face in prayer, and eats meat slaughtered in our fashion, that person is a Muslim who obtains the benefits we enjoy and takes up the responsibilities we bear. Now then, when you receive this letter, send me hostages and place yourselves under my protection. Otherwise, by Him other than Whom there is no god, I will most certainly send against you a people who love death just as you love life.

History of Al Tabri – Volume 11

From India in the east to Spain in the west expansion of Islam took place with similar ultimatums. It cannot be dismissed as an initial phase. The Ottoman Empire during its hay day plundered, took slaves and demanded tribute. Fact of the matter is such behavior was considered barbaric till the barbarian accepted Islam and then it was okay so long as he committed those acts against non muslims.

Is the current docility of Muslims because of the peaceful message of their faith or is it because of their present weakness? Minorities in Muslim lands remain insecure and fearful. I hope you would address these issues in your book.

TehsinAbbasi:

The `character` of Khalid bin Walid is an open book. His adulterous episodes and also the punishments he received are recorded for all to see. Tabari, is a well-respected and quoted source by majority muslims.

The exploits of yahyaa khan and Mushharraf are, to secularists, a sign of their conquests and bravery as well. Last time I checked they too were calling themselves muslims.

Muslim conquests whether ummayyads, abbasid or mughal just cannot be quoted as examples of the creed. UN charter and US `allegiance` to it does not need any `interpretation`. A visitor to Kabul & Baghdad would tell you that, for sure.

Hazrat Sayyidina Khalid ibn Walid (radhi Allahu anhu--may Allah be pleased with him) is one of the greatest of Sahabis (Companions of the Prophet alayhisalatuwasalam) and was given the title of ``Sayf Allah`` (The Sword of Allah) by The Beloved Prophet sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam himself.

It does not behoove Believers to make allegations against any Sahabi.

Facts about the Quran not often emphasized

#5: Reply to Dost Mitter: You are right, the masses will more readily dig into the Ulema version of the Quran than mine. But there’s no harm in bringing out facts not often emphasized by the religious doctors of the faith (one day, hopefully, they - the masses as well as the ulema - may be willing to face the facts). Another Section of my book is headed ``Facts about the Quran seldom emphasized``. If this is not too long as an interact to your comments, perhaps the editors will let me run it here. They may of course edit it down by omitting some of the quotes I have used. Here goes:

Few Muslim scholars ask a question that needs to be asked about the Quran as we know it today. When exactly, according to Islam’s own Traditionists, did the Quran come into existence as the Holy Book in the form we hold in our hands today? Mainstream sects of Islam all subscribe to the belief that the Prophet received the revelations at various stages of his prohethood, as and when he needed God’s guidance.

Traditionists of the Sunni sect agree that the verses constituting the Quran - a collection of orally conveyed revelations - was first collated as a volume some time between two years and two decades after the Prophet’s death (632 CE). Followers of the minority Shia sect disagree with this version. According to their Traditionists, the Quran in its entirety, as a whole, was handed over to Muhammad a little before his death by his cousin and son-in-law, Ali bin Abu Talib. The Shiites, however, constitute a small minority while the Sunnis make up something like 85-90 percent of world Islam.

That the Quran is a post-Prophet development is now a well established fact, supported by a great deal of non-partisan evidence. It is supported, for one thing, by simple reasoning. The Prophet received his revelations between 610 and 632, with the last of them being delivered to him, it is believed, a week or so before he died. The revelations could therefore hardly have been assembled, compiled and collated into a volume while he was living.

As though, this is not enough, clinching evidence of their ‘gradual evolution’ is provided by the Quran itself. Verse 32 chapter 25, in Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation, reads:

Those who reject Faith say: Why is not the Quran revealed to him all at once? It was revealed thus that We may strengthen thy heart thereby. And We have revealed it to thee in slow, well-arranged stages, gradually.

Many are the Traditions that may be cited to show how exactly the revelations came to be compiled. I reproduce the most significant of these in paraphrase since most do not lend themselves easily for verbatim quotation.

One such Tradition goes as follows. During his lifetime – narrates an early commentator, Jalaluddin Suyuti (d. ) - the Arabic term, Quran, used to denote any string of verses recited as part of the Islamic prayer. The name, Quran - which means a recitation or discourse – to describe the compiled form of the verses appears to have acquired currency after Muhammad’s death.

Another authentic Tradition reinforces this view. It narrates how the collected verses first came to be named. The first caliph, Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, called upon the Prophet’s close companions after his death to suggest a suitable title for the volume. Some suggested the name, Sifu; others, Mushaf. The group eventually agreed upon the name, al-Quran.

A detailed account about how the revelations were collected and issued as a volume affirms that the Prophet’s two immediate successors - the caliphs Abu Bakr (ruled 632-634) and Umar bin Khattab (r. 634-644) - commissioned his close companions and scribes to collect the revelations from diverse sources: they were found lying in a heap with one of his wives, Hafsa, or were tucked away in the memory of his companions who, gifted with the facility of total recall, are said to have learnt them by heart as they fell from the Prophet’s lips.

But the two caliphs were only partially successful. The burden of completing the work and circulating it in an authoritative edition fell upon the third caliph, Uthman bin Affan (r. 644-656). He accomplished the task and dispatched copies of what is now known as the Uthmanic rescension (Mushaf Uthman) to the far-flung regions of the then Islamic world, ordering all other dialectal variants to be burnt.

In light of all noted above, the contrary version subscribed to by the Shiites lacks credibility. Their belief that Ali handed over the Quran in its entirety to Muhammad would seem to be motivated by their well-known political animosity towards anything to do with the first three caliphs. According to the Shiites, all three of them were usurpers: by rights Ali, the fourth caliph, should have succeeded the Prophet as his only surving blood kinsman.

It is also useful to recall here that the revelations did not come down ‘from on high’ in a vacuum: they were revealed to Muhammad on every occasion that his circumstance demanded.

A close study of the Quran’s voluminous text shows that each verse or cluster of verses, besides having an immediate scriptural context, has also a historical context. Since the time that Quranic studies grew into a serious discipline, scholars - Muslim and Western - have tried to trace and document what is traditionally termed ‘the occasions of revelations’ or, as we would say today, their contextual setting. But there is as yet little scholarly consensus on the results of these exercises.

The Quran is unique but peculiar scripture

It is appropriate next to examine some rather unusual features of the Quran – unusual because they are not found in other monotheistic scriptures - most of which got attached to it in its progress through history.

First and foremost, the Quran is a unique scripture: the Prophet’s revelations have been preserved with their textual integrity intact over the centuries. This is more than can be claimed of any similar scripture. As harsh a critic of Islam as the Prophet’s biographer, Sir William Muir, writing in the 18th century under the strong influence of Christian evangelism, observed that “there is probably in the world no other which has remained twelve centuries with so pure a text”.

But this uniqueness is at least partly responsible for some of the peculiarities that now characterize it. The scribes, entrusted with the task of collecting the revelations - doubtless moved by the belief that they were reproducing God’s own words – took them down in an ‘as-is’ and unedited manner which has meant that the Quran lacks an overall structure and conceptual design.

This is the first of the Quran’s ‘peculiar’ features. Two other such features came to be associated with it in the course of its belated and hurried compilation. They are set out below under a) and b) below:

a) The arrangement of verses is without reference to context or chronology:

Under caliph Uthman’s hastily improvized orders, the Prophet’s scribes stitched the verses together with neither chronology nor context in mind but rather by arbitrarily putting the longer chapters at the beginning and the shorter ones at the end. This again has contributed to the difficulty we experience in interpreting it. One possible explanation for this arrangement may well be that the Quran was originally conceived as a book of prayers and devotions whose shorter chapters at the end of the volume could then more easily be memorized for recitation purposes.

The Canadian scholar, Andrew Rippin, sums up this feature in his little book, The Muslims, thus:

How did the Quran come to look the way it does, with the subject matter within individual chapters jumping from one topic to the next, with duplications and apparent inconsistencies in grammar, law and theology abounding? To the source critic, the work displays all the tendencies of rushed editing with only the most superficial concern for the content, the editors/compilers apparently engaged in establishing a fixed text of scripture.

Westerners, generally speaking, find the unstructured nature of the text to be in turn fascinating and exasperating. The British journalist, Malise Ruthven, author of a sympathetic introductory book, Islam in the World, belongs to the former category. The Quran for him consists of stories of the earlier prophets and punishment stories about those who failed to heed them mixed with ‘psalm-like lyrical passages’ celebrating the manifestation of God’s glory and ‘Leviticus-like legal prescriptions’. He illustrates the point by reproducing a passage from the Sura of Light which he declares to be “among the most celebrated passages in all mystical literature”:

God is the Light of the Heavens and Earth, a Light that sits in a niche containing a lamp, the lamp enclosed in glass, the glass like a radiant star; a lamp lit from a blessed tree, an olive tree neither of the east or west, the oil whereof so bright that it shines forth even though no fire has touched it. Light upon Light. (Quran 24: ).

But, given its ill-ordered arrangement, some of the most eloquent verses are found juxtaposed with its most prosaic. For instance, the above passage, undoubtedly one of great mystic beauty, is preceded by verses that prescribe punishment for the offence of adultery (100 lashes) and, a verse or two later, for that of slander (80 lashes). Some verses in the same chapter urge upon women not to ‘swing their legs while walking so as not to draw attention to their hidden charms’.

Never short of empathy for his subject, Ruthven is able to find a plausible justification for this “curious amalgam”:

This deliberate mixing of the sublime and the mundane, which Westeners might see as evidence of a ‘consistent lack of logical structure’, has in the didactic and liturgical context a powerful function. For, despite the proliferation of manuscripts of the Quran, and its extensive use in the highly developed art-form of calligraphic embellishment, it is primarily a series of texts designed for oral transmission.

Not all Westerners are as sympathetic. Available to them mostly in translation, the Quran was declared by most to be a “repetitious” and “incoherent” read.

Thomas Carlyle, the 18th century essayist, was particularly harsh in his judgement. He found it “as toilsome reading as I ever undertook ... nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran”, adding with as much incoherence as he found in his subject: [It is] “a wearisome confused jumble [marked by] crude, incondite, endless iterations [and] longwindedness entanglement ... insupportable stupidity, in short!”

The 19th century German classicist, Goethe, on the other hand, came to this mixed conclusion:

However often we turn to it [the Quran], at first disgusting each time afresh, it soon attracts, astounds, and in the end enforces our reverence ... Its style, in accordance with its contents and aim, is stern, grand terrible - ever and anon sublime ... Thus this book will go on exercising through all ages a most potent influence.

Once again, it is Ruthven who puts in an empathetic plea for the Quran. Its “mixed character” and “seemingly arbitrary sense of organization”, he observes, are well suited to the purpose at hand. Westerners, he suggests, should see the Quran for what it was, a series of “one-way dialogues” between God and the Prophet and between Muhammad and his auditors.

The effect is not unlike listening to a person speaking on the telephone: one only hears half the conversation. The inaudible part of the discourse, Muhammad’s unspoken questions, the arguments of his critics, and so forth have to be constructed out of the exegetical literature, which draws on the vast body of hadith-tradition. (Ruthven, 1985: ).

b) A variety of different materials make up the text: A simple content analysis shows that the various themes covered by the Quran belong to at least four distinct categories, reinforcing its image of a “mixed scripture” in Western eyes. Four such ctegories can be easily identified:

i) spiritual and cosmic truths received during Muhammad’s first decade as prophet spent in Mecca where he met with stiff tribal resistance to his new religious and social teachings;

ii) religious history based on stories of earlier prophets and the fate that befell them for disobeying God’s commandments;

iii) penal legislation to deal with common problems of state arising during Muhammad’s second decade as prophet which he spent in exile in Medina to unwittingly become virtual head of the world’s first Islamic community; and,

iv) advice and instruction to the Prophet on how to cope with political and other mundane challenges arising in the course of his troubled political career in Medina.

It is not surprising if one finds an extremely mundane kind of verse in the body of the Quran. In it, the divine advice rendered to the Prophet is about the practical steps he should take as a precaution to ensure his personal safety against dangers that ever loomed over his life. Thus:

Verse 102 of chapter 4, in Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation, reads:

When you, O apostle, are at prayer with those who wish ill of you, let one group among them stand in line with you ensuring that their arms are with them. When they finish their prostrations, let them move to the rear, and let the other party that has not prayed join you but ensure that they bear their arms and you have taken all precautions. For, the Unbelievers would want you to be negligent so that they might rush at you and assault you. But there is no blame on you if you put away your arms because it is inconvenient to carry them for reasons of rain or your illness; so long as you take all precautions.

Due to this bewildering variety of elements - some spiritual, others mundane and quotidian – some scholars have raised the question, whether it is proper to regard all of the Quran as of equal weight and sanctity. Or, can some of its this-worldly verses be treated as ‘severable’ from its more spiritual ones? Some reformist exegetes have come up with innovative suggestions, notably the 19th cnetury author of the Spirit of Islam, Syed Ameer Ali, and more recently, professor of philosophy a Columbia University, Aqueel Bilgrami. Their suggestions about the ‘severability’ of the verses of the Quran will be fully dealt with in a later Section.

To sum up, then, the three historical peculiarites outlined above are far too important for a objective student of Islam to ignore. Even at the risk of repeating them, these are: a) while the Quran is a faithful record of the Prophet’s revelations, these were reproduced unedited by his scribes after his death; b) when the Quran’s verses were collated into a volume, it was done without regard to context or chronology; and c) the Quran’s contents are made up of a large variety of different elements: legislation, narratives of prophets of old, and advices to the Prophet.

x x x

The cumulative result of these various factors, I belive, renders the Quran a very difficult scripture to interpret. (In a subsequent Section of my book, I hope to offer some proposals that may help to overcome this difficulty).

Rasheed Talib saheb:

You write:

{{First and foremost, the Quran is a unique scripture: the Prophet’s revelations have been preserved with their textual integrity intact over the centuries.}}

Here is a link to an interesting article from the Atlantic Monthly, January 1999, that among other things refers to evidence that appears to contradict the standard assumption of perfect integrity of textual transmission, at least in the early years of the Muslim era, and points, instead, to an evolving text.

``What is the Koran?``

Re: AlephNull#10

Chowk had done a special on that piece at that time: you can view the debate on that article at Chowk

http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00000471&channel=civic%20center&start=0&end=9&page=1&chapter=1

Rasheed,

In your islamic manifesto, what is needed is not yet another interpretation of the but the courrage to change the present course of islam. Are you bold enough to say, `` jihad is not killing of kafirs``. Well I can assure you that no interpretation can come to the above conclusion, and there in lies the pathos of yet another interpretation.
When the world links islam to terrorism, it is only this central concept of islam that people are focussing on. At some level you have to accept that an religion assures heaven for its stauchest follower, and in islam the only guarenteed heaven is for a shaheed, the one who went and killed a few kafirs. Not only the chowk, the whole world is waiting for an interpretation that will put jihad at a lower pedestal in islamic theology.

mr abbasi,

......... you are a trouble maker - next thing we know you will be suggesting that the prophet committed violence against the people of mecca .... anouzobillah!........people like you are constantly providing fodder to enemies of the ummah like jay..........it is not advisable to air dirty family laundry in public...................stop digging up dirt on great muslims like khalid bin walid, tariq in ziad, muhammad bin qasim and tiger bin niazi or else we will have to talk about your trecherous ancestors who did more harm to baghdad than uday bin saddam .................

......... i think it was dost-mittar who asked if it is possible to separate religion and politics in islam ........ personally i don`t think it is possible, unless gabriel drops by with a revision and you are home to receive it........but what do you think ?............. however, i must say that i saw some hope for the ummah in the fact that the bar tender at dubai airport continued to pour me a drink even as the muezzin wailed ..............

``Mainstream sects of Islam all subscribe to the belief that the Prophet received the revelations at various stages of his prohethood, as and when he needed God’s guidance.``
(RASHEED TALIB)

......AND therein lies the CRUX of the problem facing the ``Mainstream sects of Islam `` -- if your book is based is on this premise -- then you are no reformer, Rasheed Talib

let me tell you something that you ought to know about the mainstream Christians of the Western World -- it took ``Main stream Christian`` scholars -- one hundred years -- to shed this very same notion that -- Bible is God words verbatim revealed to Prophethoods as and when they needed God` Guidance....

and look where they are.......and where we are......

UNLESS any Muslim Reformer/Scholar worth the salt -- has the courage to take up this gauntlet and call a spade a spade -- there is no salvation for the Muslims in the near future -

talking of courage -- you see even I don`t have the courage to say -- that the Quran is not the God`s word revealed to the prophet -- it is a man made geohistorical book of the region...the LAST in the series of the three books......over an expanse of 5 thousand years

but of course I am no Scholar either......

9:Rashid Talib

All ulemas are thoroughly exposed to such arguments or `facts` as you put them. Allama
Iqbal has also covered this subject.

You are saying nothing new under the sun. Such discourse is THE most cherished and celebrated part of our heritage. Books about such discourses by mutazzalites ashha`aries and many other `schools` (not fiqhues or sects--mind you) are still available in their entirety, uncensored and un-expurgated. In fact they are a required reading for ulemas.

Yours is an innocent enquiry. You want to learn . You are interested in removing your own doubts and confusuions. You can do no harm to anyone. Your desire is sincere viz-a-viz the satanic-curses. Please do not demean yourself by associating yourself to those two riff-raffs.

Happy writing and publishing!

Tehsinabbasi:
``I will most certainly send against you a people who love death just as you love life.``

You have identified the core issue that the Non-Muslim world has with Islam. As long as Muslims continue to take pride in those who love death more than life, it will be hard for non-Muslims to accept Islam as a `relgion of peace` no matter how many times some spin doctors keep chanting that mantra.